Jessica Chastain has shared the career advice she gave her four-year-old daughter, Giuletta.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye star made a rare comment about her family life in a recent interview with Marie Claire. Chastain, who shares two young children with husband Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo, recalled how her four-year-old daughter, Giuletta, had told her she wants to be a mother when she grows up. But the Oscar-winning actress and producer let her daughter in on a secret: she can be more than just one thing when she’s older.
“Normally I never talk about my personal life,” Chastain told Marie Claire. "But I had a conversation with my daughter not that long ago. And when you’re talking to kids it’s like, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ ‘I want to be a ballerina.’”
“And she was like, ‘I want to be a mama,’” the 45-year old actress explained. Although she told her daughter that being a mother is “a great thing to be,” she wanted her daughter to know that she can be “more than one thing,” and listed her own accomplishments as an example.
“I’m a mama. I’m an actress. I’m a producer. I’m a business owner. I’m a friend. I’m a cook. I started listing all these things,” Chastain recalled. “Like, I am many things, so you can be whatever you want. You can be the president. You can be a ballerina. You can be a mama.”
“And it was so shocking for her to hear all of this,” the Zero Dark Thirty star added.
Jessica Chastain has been married to Italian noble and fashion executive Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo since June 2017. In November 2018, the couple welcomed their daughter Giulietta Passi Chastain via surrogate, according to Page Six. The pair appeared to welcome a second baby in 2020 when Chastain was seen holding an infant in a carrier, with her husband pushing their daughter in a stroller.
Despite being a mother herself, Jessica Chastain has said that she thinks it’s “great” when women can decide not to have children. In an interview with The Guardian this week, the George and Tammy star cited her own upbringing as influencing her feelings on a woman’s right to choose when or if to have children.
“It’s very important to me that women have access to contraceptives and freedom over that,” she said. “The problem is that my mom, my grandmother and all the women in my family were pregnant when they were 17, because they were never given that choice.
“Birth control is expensive. And they couldn’t rely on men to do their part, to be responsible. So it’s very important to me that women have access to contraceptives and freedom over that,” she continued.
“Because I know a lot of people are freaked out when women decide not to have children. But I think that’s great.”
