Jessica Chastain in The Heiress — Page 2

Well, you know, she's just a teenager.

Are you suestorm's brother?

good question SPOT, i guess its just interepeting the comments, its not meant to be so literal.

Phyllis, you dont know me, dismissing me as a teenager is as silly as medismissing you as a bitter old lady.

if it helps though, i can use harsher language instead of trying to be polite. but yes Tom Brady is a jerk. he left his pregnant GF for a supermodel. i think we can all agree on that! lol

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What I was saying was that people who are shy can often, over time, learn how to be better with people and more outgoing the more they are socialized. Shy is something that can be changed - not always, but it isn't a disorder - an actual medical condition that makes your brain work differently. If she was autistic, there are limitations that she most likely would not be able to break through no matter what she, nor anyone else, wanted for her due to brain chemistry. That isn't to say autistic people cannot be highly functioning or learn how to improve social skills.

Also, I am not assuming everyone else read her performance like me (hence this question on the board in the first place), though almost all of the reviews I read mentioned something about how she acted it so flatly it seemed like she was playing Catherine as if she were autistic. I happen to agree with those comments, but I wanted to know what everyone else thought. So, thanks for your input (I mean that honestly even though that sounds snarky)!

Updated On: 1/23/13 at 03:33 PM

I love it, though! I wish everyone called me a bitter old lady!

I haven't seen the play but have run into a bunch of Heiress-related questions in interviews Chastain has had this Oscars season. Obviously there was nothing in the interview where she was like, 'Catherine is totally autistic and that is how I play her' but she did mention how she and Viola Davis had a conversation about the play and how Davis remarked about the role being 'a trap' for a lot of actresses as an observer of seeing a lot of Catherines. I'd recommend her interview with David Poland on the DP/30 interviews on Youtube (the Zero Dark Thirty one), which is where the Davis conversation is referenced.

Also OP, you seem to ignore a distinction. You think it was a conscious acting choice when that is just you and maybe some others interpreting it that way. That does not mean she is unbeknownst to you giving an amazing performance as Catherine but that you seem to be conflating the notion that your interpretation of how she performed it (which others have disagreed with or agree in not being wild about the performance for other reasons) means there was some conscious acting choice with the belief that Catherine was autistic or on the autistic spectrum.

For another Chastain example, lots of debate on if her character Maya in Zero Dark Thirty is supposed to be a character to relate to as a viewer and there are a lot of splits of whether or not she is supposed to be based on what is written for her and acting choices she makes. Nobody can definitively say she is or is not but like a lot of Zero Dark Thirty pieces, people seem to think their interpretation is the only interpretation or the one the actors and filmmakers had in mind.