Actress Jessica Chastain transforms into controversial televangelist Tammy Faye in biopic

LOS ANGELES - Jessica Chastain will get a third shot at winning an Academy Award next month, when she is up for the Best Actress Oscar for the film, The Eyes Of Tammy Faye.

Now streaming on Disney+ in Singapore, the biopic offers a reappraisal of Tammy Faye Bakker, the late American televangelist and singer known for the financial scandals that plagued her and her husband Jim Bakker's religious empire.

And after preparing for the role for seven years, Chastain is transformed on screen with the help of facial prosthetics and make-up that render her almost unrecognisable.

Speaking at a virtual press event, she says she wanted to show how the much-maligned Bakker was actually "nothing like the caricature the media fed off" after her husband was convicted on fraud charges.

Chastain says she was drawn to her because, like the other women she has played, Bakker represents "something different, and usually it's something unexplored in me that I'm interested in".

Bakker and her late husband Jim, played by The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) star Andrew Garfield, were two of the most-watched Christian evangelists on American television in the 1970s and 1980s.

They rose from humble beginnings to launch the world's largest religious broadcasting network and hosted a popular televangelical show. The couple also had a theme park.

They were famous for their extravagance but their multimillion-dollar lifestyle was tainted by multiple scandals and finally crumbled in 1989 when Jim Bakker was convicted of defrauding their followers of millions.

Chastain was fascinated with the woman behind it all - an eccentric yet charismatic figure who was far more progressive than other Christian leaders, and one of the few openly supportive of the gay community at that time.

"She was just fearless and that was something about her that I really admired because I can be quite shy," says the actress, who has appeared in science-fiction blockbuster Interstellar (2014) and won Oscar nominations for the dramas The Help (2011) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012).

"There was something about her that really lived life as lovingly, as largely and as unapologetically as she could. And I think we should all have that," she adds.

To prepare for the role, Chastain - who trained at New York's Juilliard performing arts school - studied Bakker for seven years, poring over hours of recordings to memorise her mannerisms and vocal inflections.

She also had to put on facial prosthetics and Bakker's trademark heavy make-up and false eyelashes, a process that took four to seven hours each time.

"It was one of the most extreme transformations I've ever done," says Chastain, who is also an executive producer on the film. "A lot of people say make-up is a mask but I think for Tammy Faye, and for a lot of people, it's not a way of covering up who you are but self-expression.

"She used make-up to describe how she'd feel inside and it made her feel beautiful. So for me, it was a celebration of the transformation that she would make, every day, into that world of beauty and wonder."

The film also highlights how Bakker was so much more than the husband who dragged her down.

Chastain says: "She was the ordained minister Jim wasn't. She preached acceptance and compassion and meant it, and that's what I wanted people to see in this film.

"When everyone turned their backs on people with HIV and Aids, she invited a high-profile gay pastor who had Aids to be on her show."

Bakker also hosted Christian network shows all day, released 24 albums and "never got paid for any of it - she gave her money to the church".

The actress says: "And she was never embarrassed. People were drawn to her because she was unique. And she used her platform to advocate for a celebration of our differences."