All All. Sign In. The Best Actress List activity. Sarah Paulson. Actress Producer Director 12 Years a Slave She also had two major roles in the comedy Bug and the drama, Levitation , where she starred as a pregnant teenager who searches for her biological mother, with the help of a guardian angel. Jessica Chastain. Jessica Michelle Chastain was born in Sacramento, California, and was raised in a middle-class household in a Northern California suburb. Her mother, Jerri Chastain, is a vegan chef whose family is originally from Kansas, and her stepfather is a fireman.
She discovered dance at the age of nine and was in a dance troupe by age thirteen. She began performing in Shakespearean productions all over the Bay area.
She became a member of "Crew 32" with the help of a scholarship from one of the school's famous alumni, Robin Williams. In , she had a prolific year in film.
She was nominated for and won a number of awards, including a Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for The Help Jennifer Lawrence. She is also the first person born in the s to have won an acting Oscar. Jennifer Shrader Lawrence was born August 15, , in Louisville, Kentucky, to Karen Koch , who manages a children's camp, and Gary Lawrence, who works in construction.
Her career began when she traveled to Manhattan at the age of fourteen after dropping out of the 8th grade. After conducting her first cold read, agents told her mother that "it was the best cold read by a year-old they had ever heard," and tried to convince her stage mother that she needed to spend the summer in Manhattan.
