Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images
Jessica Chastainis discussing her tough path to stardom.
“I had always thought that I wasn’t an intelligent person because I did badly at school,” theGeorge & Tammystar, who dropped out of high school, recently toldThe Guardian. (Chastain would later get her adult diploma, she previously shared withEntertainment Weekly.)
Chastain continued, “I was an obnoxious kid because I wasn’t getting appropriate attention. I would do things like eat banana peels in the lunch rooms so kids would notice me.”
Jessica Chastain.Robin L Marshall/WireImage
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories.
“I was in high school, and there was a trip to the Oregon Shakespeare festival and I saw Marco Barricelli play Richard III. And … something opened up inside me. It was the strangest thing, that I could be so moved. I had the hugest crush on that actor,” she toldThe Guardian.
She was 15 at the time, she recalled to the outlet.
“I became obsessed with Shakespeare. My grandma had just bought these ornamental books – she liked design, and these books weren’t meant to be read. They just sat on the shelf to look good. And one was the complete works of Shakespeare. I still have it. To me it’s very sentimental,” she said.
The actress admitted poetry was the draw: “It was something about the rhythm and how it fed into the emotion.”
After later joining a theater group, Chastain toldThe Guardianshe played the role ofRomeo & Juliet’s Juliet twice, a role she considers her “favorite part.”
“It felt like someone understood me in a different way,” she said of discovering her passion for acting. “I can get emotional talking about it. It’s like you’re not being seen. Then all of a sudden, someone who was alive years ago sees you.”
source: people.com
