Jessica Chastain on sexual misconduct in Hollywood: I'm not comfortable with silence

Jessica Chastain wants to end for good the code of silence surrounding sexual misconduct in Hollywood, and offer a sounding board for its victims, after an avalanche of accusations felled some of Tinseltown’s most powerful figures. “I’m not comfortable with silence,” said the 40-year-old actress, who stars as a ski champion turned poker queen in Molly’s Game, Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut and an Academy Award favorite.

“I believe that if you are in an industry that is unhealthy then you are part of the problem and your inaction is complicity,” she told AFP. The red-headed Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee, who is herself a producer, spoke of her outrage at the deluge of allegations targeting Hollywood titan Harvey Weinstein, now accused by close to 100 women of misconduct ranging from sexual harassment to assault and rape. The Weinstein affair and its fallout are being seen as a watershed in the US entertainment industry and beyond as powerful men — most prominently the two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey — are called out as abusers, and Chastain has been vocal on social media about the snowballing allegations. “It’s important for me to use any platform I have to amplify the voices of those who have risked everything to save others,” she said. “It feels personal because I am a woman. I have many friends who have been misused or mistreated.” Accusers have included some of the most celebrated stars in cinema today, including Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Lea Seydoux. [caption id=“attachment_4200845” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Jessica Chastain. Image via Facebook[/caption] One of Chastain’s own tweets caused a stir after she linked to an article about sexual misconduct allegations against Bryan Singer — the producer of her next movie X-Men: Dark Phoenix. Singer has been targeted by several lawsuits alleging he forced teenaged boys into sex. The cases have since been either dismissed or dropped and a legal representative for Singer said raising past accusations without proof was “reckless and outrageous.” Chastain, who has long alternated between independent films like A Most Violent Year (2014) and major productions like The Martian (2015), said Singer was not on the set of X-Men and that she had only learned recently that he was a producer of the movie. - ‘More transparent’ industry? - “I do think people should look at who they are working with,” said Chastain, whose big break came with Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or-winning 2011 movie The Tree of Life in which she plays the wife of a bullying husband. The Californian actress recounts how the seeds of her feminism were sowed in childhood. “I grew up with a single mom and I saw her struggle to keep food on our table, and I saw the injustice of what was happening around her,” she said. Early on, she was aware of the discrimination faced by women, including at New York’s prominent performing arts school Juilliard. “Very early on, I realized there was in each class about two thirds men and one third women, and I asked a professor: ‘Why isn’t it 50/50?’ And he said, well there are more parts for men than women,” Chastain said. “But how are you going to change the place unless you change that thinking?” For Chastain, it’s not the film industry that’s to blame but a patriarchal system at large, whether it’s on Wall Street, in the media or in Hollywood. She advocates an effort to promote more diversity in powerful positions. Luther and The Wire actor Idris Elba, who plays Chastain’s lawyer in Molly’s Game, acknowledged that the phenomenon of the “casting couch” has “been known for a very long time” — but he is hopeful for the future. “As dark and horrible as some of the things we’ve discovered some actors have gone through, the light at the end of the tunnel is that we’re going to have a cleaner industry, more transparent,” said the 45-year-old British star. “I’m thankful that people now have the liberty to speak up about that. It’s no secret that Hollywood has been practically built almost on this horrible system. We can all breathe a little, and I think the industry will benefit from that.”