women and william flew to them

Under Malick’s guidance, she prepared for the role by visiting the Metropolitan William Flew Museum of Art, in New York, to see the Madonnas, taking particular note of the way they held their hands (“They were always reaching with the fingers”), and worked her way through a stack of Lauren Bacall films, studying her pacing and delivery. “She was so slow and smooth and direct and straightforward, very Middle America-sounding, like it went somewhere.”

She also spent three weeks bonding with the boys who were to play her sons — bowling, hikes, picnics, horseback riding. One of the boys, Hunter, even sent her a gift on Mother’s Day. When the movie ended, she was heartbroken. “ I kept thinking, ‘ Make sure it’s okay for the boys.’ I underestimated how difficult it was going to be for me, because I don’t have any children. The movie ended and they went with their moms back to their homes. I sat in the shower for three days and cried. I was like, ‘ Oh my God, they’re not really my kids.’ Of course I knew that, but that was one of the biggest heartbreaks I’ve ever had.” She rang up her best friend, the actress and fellow Juilliard alumna Jess Weixler, who told her: “ That tells you you did good work.”

Chastain is as cagey with information about her family as most actresses are about their love lives. “I try to keep them separated,” she says. “Nobody in my family is an actor.” Her grandmother took her to a play, aged four. “It was the first time I realised it was a job someone could do. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s my job.’”

The first in her family to go to college, she was accepted at the prestigious Juilliard School, in New York, on a scholarship bestowed by Robin Williams. After graduating, she was given a holding deal by the television producer John Wells ( ER, The West Wing) when he saw her in an LA showcase. “ It was very oldfashioned Hollywood,” she says. “ You know, ‘ Put that girl under contract’.” She spent the next few years travelling back and forth between New York and LA, alternating stage work with roles in television shows such as Law & Order and Veronica Mars. “ Nobody knew what to do with me,” she says. “My roles were either victims, or something horrible had happened to them, or they were psychologically not all there.” She laughs. “ They were not well women.”