A Minute With: Jessica Chastain on "Zero Dark Thirty"

Cast members Jessica Chastain and Edgar Ramirez greet each other at the premiere of ''Zero Dark Thirty''at the Dolby theatre in Hollywood, California December 10, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK | Wed Dec 19, 2012 10:22am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jessica Chastain carries the weight of starring in one of the year's most anticipated films, "Zero Dark Thirty," about the decade-long hunt and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden.

Critics say Chastain pulls it off seamlessly as "Maya," based on a real-life CIA agent who played a major role in tracking down bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan.

As the film opens in limited U.S. release on Wednesday, Chastain, who is tipped as a likely best actress Oscar nominee for the role, talked to Reuters about playing a character she could not meet and why the film is an important look at America's role in a dark war.

Q. What did you think when you saw this film finished?

A. "It is a tough one for me to watch, because there is so much responsibility with playing this woman. I find her to be incredible. And I didn't want to change her story or make her a Hollywood version, with a lot of makeup. I didn't want to trivialize what she did ... I want her to like it, but I don't know if she will ever see it."

Q. How did you play someone you had never met?

A. "There was three months of working with (screenplay writer) Mark Boal, doing research, reading lists and talking to people. And then anything I could not solve through research, like what is her favorite candy - 'cause when we are all overseas we have something we do when we are homesick - I had to answer that question myself."

Q. Boal hasn't gone into too much detail about her?

A. "We have to protect her because she is an undercover CIA operative, still working."

Q. What else did you know about her?

A. "When we finished the movie, when the Navy Seal book 'No Easy Day' came out. I raced to go read it, because I was like, 'I need to know if my character is in the book!' And they talk about Jen, the young CIA girl. Well, everything matched up. She was the only one that said 100 percent 'he is there.'... They talked about how she had been on it close to a decade and they were only on it for 40 minutes. They said she was crying on the airplane afterwards."

Q. During filming, were you ever worried about your safety, that the film might be misconstrued?

A. "As an actor you always worry about that. Because you think, maybe someone will see a film and they won't understand the difference between acting and reality. The good thing is, what (director Kathryn Bigelow) and Mark have done, is that they have not made a propaganda film. They tried to make it as authentic as possible and respectful of the actual historical event as they could. That includes showing the intense interrogation techniques that were used. The end of the film - it's not a lot of fist pumping and saying, 'Here is our journey over 10 years and it was so difficult and we finally did it.' It ends actually on a very different note."

Q. Can you elaborate on that?

A. "Well, for me the whole thing is about the arc of this woman. She shows up in the beginning and she is wearing her best suit. She thinks she knows what she is in for, and she is completely out of her element. But over the 10 years, this woman, who has been trained to be unemotional and analytically precise ... we see her struggling to keep it contained for 10 years and as she descends down the rabbit hole of the world she is in.

"So finally at the end when she is asked, 'Where do you want to go?' there is no way to answer that question. ... She has no idea where she belongs, now that this is done. But not only does it speak in terms of that, but the movie ends with that question - where do you want to go? Where do we go now as a country? Where do we go as a society? It is not a movie that ends with an answer, and I find that powerful."

Q. How did you cope with filming the torture scenes?

A. "We filmed in a real Jordanian prison, in the middle of nowhere. The environment wasn't great, especially as a woman.

"They had a lot of trust between the actors, nothing was dangerous or unsafe. There was a lot of discussion to make sure that we weren't doing something that was going to be salacious. They just wanted it to be accurate.

"I know I am playing a character who has trained to be unemotional. But I have spent my entire life allowing myself to be emotional, and allowing myself to feel everything. ... There was actually one day that we were doing a scene, and I said, 'I am sorry' and I just had to walk away, and I just started crying ... it was a very intense experience."

Q. You are a top chance for Oscar nomination. Would that be more or less rewarding for this role?

A. "Because she is still an active member of the CIA and undercover, she can't take credit for what she's done. ... And by making this film, it is my idea as a way of thanking her. It would be very emotional because of that."

Q. You compare your character to getting lost down a CIA rabbit hole. What about your own dizzying rise as an actress?

A. "That's a good question. I do think that next year I need to go somewhere for a month and be in a room by myself and be like, 'Ok, what now Jessica?' But I am nowhere near where she was at the end of this mission."

(Reporting By Christine Kearney, editing by Jill Serjeant and Doina Chiacu)

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Bin Laden movie "Zero Dark Thirty" arrives, mired in controversy

Director and producer of the movie Kathryn Bigelow waves at the premiere of ''Zero Dark Thirty''at the Dolby theatre in Hollywood, California December 10, 2012. The movie opens in the U.S. on January 11.

Credit: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK | Mon Dec 17, 2012 2:13pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow could have made a testosterone-fueled shoot-'em-up Hollywood version of the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden.

Instead, she and screenwriter Mark Boal turned "Zero Dark Thirty" into a more complex look at the decade-long hunt for the al Qaeda leader, including a frank presentation of U.S. torture and previously undisclosed details of the mission to hunt down the man behind the September 11 attacks.

When the film opens in limited U.S. release on Wednesday, Bigelow and Boal want audiences to disregard a year of controversies, including claims, which they have denied, that the film makers were leaked classified information.

"It's about a look inside the intelligence community. The strength and power and courage and dedication and tenacity and vulnerability of these women and men," Bigelow, 61, told Reuters in a joint interview with Boal.

Bigelow won an Academy Award in 2010 for "The Hurt Locker," about U.S. army bomb disposal experts in Iraq. She says her latest movie puts the audience at the center of the quest to find bin Laden, and gives a perspective of the U.S. intelligence community and how its methods changed in the years following the September 11 attacks.

"It's a controversial topic, it's a topic that has been endlessly politicized. The film has been mischaracterized for a year and a half and we would love it if people would go and see it and judge for themselves," Boal said.

The action thriller has emerged as an Oscar front-runner after picking up multiple early awards and nominations from Hollywood groups.

FROM TORA BORA TO ABBOTTABAD

When bin Laden was killed by Navy commandos in May 2011, Bigelow was only months away from shooting a film about the failed bid to find him in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan during the U.S.-led invasion a decade earlier.

She quickly revised the project.

"Zero Dark Thirty" opens not long after the September 11 attacks with graphic scenes of interrogation, including water boarding, sexual humiliation and a detainee being forced into a box.

It stars Jessica Chastain as a CIA officer called "Maya" who uses intelligence gleaned from brutal interrogations, electronic surveillance and old-fashioned spying to track down bin Laden through his use of couriers.

The opening scenes of torture, which are seen in the movie as yielding both correct and false information from prisoners, have inflamed debate in the United States.

Bigelow and Boal said the film is not meant to pass judgment - positive or negative - on such interrogation. "What we are trying to show, is that it (torture) happened. Which I think is not that controversial," said Boal.

"It's obviously an ongoing debate. It's a debate within the community of people who are experts and I am sure that debate will continue for many years," he added.

Bigelow points out that much of the second half of the film shows agents using other methods such as electronic surveillance.

The movie shifts between locations, including secret CIA centers in foreign countries known as Black sites, the Pakistan city of Islamabad and Camp Chapman, in Khost, Afghanistan. It is not meant to be an accurate depiction of all the players involved in hunting the al Qaeda leader, Bigelow and Boal said.

REAL AND COMPOSITE CHARACTERS

Instead, it tells the story through the eyes of Maya, fresh-faced and not long in the field, battling security threats, CIA bureaucracy and unsupportive bosses to eventually track bin Laden to his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

"She is based on a real person, and there are other people who also contributed who are not represented, whose work I hope is reflected in her character - it's a character in a movie and not a documentary," Boal said.

"I wanted to put the audience in the perspective of those people, those men and women on the ground who are conducting this hunt," said Bigelow. "It's ten years compressed into two plus hours...But it's really the rhythm of the hunt that creates the rhythm of the movie."

Chastain told Reuters in an interview that the woman she portrays is still active. The Washington Post has reported that the agent is now in her thirties, remains undercover and while receiving the agency's highest medal, was denied a promotion.

Boal, a freelance journalist turned screenwriter who won a best screenplay Oscar for "The Hurt Locker", would not elaborate except to say that the agent was "a real person."

"I spoke to a number of people, I gathered as many first hand accounts as I could," he said. He has denied being leaked, or asking for, any classified material.

Early reviews of the film, which will be released more widely on January 11, have been positive, especially for Bigelow's sense of pacing and suspense. The Hollywood Reporter said it "could well be the most impressive film Bigelow has made, as well as possibly her most personal."

(Reporting by Christine Kearney, editing by Jill Serjeant and David Storey)

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