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For as talented as she is, it turns out Academy Award-winning actress Jessica Chastain is equally weird, as evidenced by some bizarre childhood habits she recently admitted to having.
During a recent appearance on Marc Maron’s podcast, the 46-year-old Chastain — who is fresh off of starring in A Doll’s House on Broadway earlier this year — revealed that she would eat orange and banana peels as a child with the intent of receiving attention.
“I remember sitting in the cafeteria and eating orange peels and banana peels because it made people notice me. The other kids would be like, ‘Oh my God, look at her.’ I know, it’s terrible. I just wanted people to notice me for being a weirdo, that I was existing, something,” Chastain said.
“I wasn’t, like, the best student. I was a bit… probably obnoxious. I was kind of nerdy. One time they permed my hair and I looked like Annie, and then we cut it off. I had really short hair, red hair. I look back and I’m like, ‘Oh, what a sweet, clueless person.'”
While Chastain has yet to appear in a film this year, she’s set to star in the Michel Franco-directed movie Memory, which will be premiering at the Venice Film Festival in early September. She also starred alongside Michael Shannon in the Showtime series George & Tammy earlier this year.
Chastain is also set to star alongside fellow Oscar winner Anne Hathaway in the psychological thriller Mothers’ Instinct, which is a remake of the 2018 French film of the same name and is currently scheduled to release next year.
Making her feature film debut as the titular character in the 2008 film Jolene, Chastain went on to appear in films such as Take Shelter, The Tree of Life, Lawless, and The Help, the latter of which resulted in his first Academy Award nomination.
She’d then be nominated for Best Actress in 2013 for her work in Zero Dark Thirty, and from there, she was a bonafide A-lister, starring in films such as The Martian, Interstellar, Crimson Peak, Molly’s Game, It Chapter Two, and more.
For her work in 2021’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Chastain received her third Oscar nomination and first win.
If you want to keep up with what Chastain is up to, you can follow her on Instagram.