Jessica Chastain

What's wrong with trying hard and showing up and being good at your job? We really need to look at ourselves and say we need to reevaluate this. We need to reevaluate that women who ask for a pay raise or ask for a promotion - it's actually an okay thing. It's okay to be ambitious; it's okay to be over-prepared.

My goal is that a girl will watch 'The Martian' or 'Interstellar' and think, 'I want to be an astronaut or a quantum physicist.' It's important to show powerful women who are good at their jobs because young girls need those examples.

Only a woman can tell you what it's like to be a woman in a society where men are in charge. When you have one demographic that controls the livelihood of minorities, then you're always going to have abuses of power. So this goes way beyond Hollywood.

I went to public school, and I didn't do well in school. And it wasn't until, actually, I got into school at Juilliard - it was the first time in my life that I thought, 'Oh, maybe I'm not stupid,' because I was so inspired and passionate about what I was learning, and it was the first time in my life I had felt that.

Being a woman has always been a powerful thing, where history has sometimes dictated otherwise, but I believe that a woman can be compassionate, sensitive, soft, kind.

Acting, for me, has never been about wanting attention or wanting to be seen. It's funny that I'm in a profession where that's where I am. There's so much I want to express; it's about connecting with another person and the intimacy of what that is, and so I have to overcome my shyness.

I think that with any emotion - fear, love, nervousness - if the actor's feeling it, then the audience feels it.

I like characters and stories that challenge the status quo. Lately, I'm really interested in history because I find that in my public school education, I didn't learn about women in history. I want to introduce the world to some great stories and incredible heroes.

I don't want to be in my car all day. I love getting up in the morning in Venice and walking my dogs down to the cafe to get my tea, and then perhaps going to a bookstore and sitting and reading, then walking to the beach.