Jessica Chastain: I'd be lost without acting

Jessica Chastain thinks acting is a "beautiful prison".

The actress became a household name after her Oscar nomination for Zero Dark Thirty in 2012. Despite finding worldwide fame relatively late, the 37-year-old always knew she would be an actress, and can't think how her life would be without it.

"I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have this form of expression because it offers me a freedom I don’t have in my personal life," she told the British edition of Harper's Bazaar. "It’s a beautiful prison I’ve created for myself."

While Jessica can take on a wide array of characters with aplomb, in her own life she admits to being extremely shy. In fact without the mask of a character to hide behind, The Help star has struggled to know who she actually is.

"Probably there are some people who feel great about themselves and don’t second-guess anything they say or do or wear, but that’s just not me," she explained. "[Some characters] really [take] a toll... If you’re doing something dark, when you leave, part of you is going to be empty. I started to feel really negative about myself, down on who I am, and then I realised it’s because I’ve had so much time away from me that I don’t really know what I like to do anymore. I’m out of it now, but there was this feeling of being sad or depressed... Wanting to go to another project."

Regardless of her attempts to find herself, Jessica loves the transformation process that comes with taking a role.

"There’s something about when I go on set and play a character, even the more different the characters are from me, the truth of who I am can come out and can be seen when a camera is looking into you," she said.