Jessica Chastain heaps praise on Andrew Garfield

After taking home a SAG for Best Female Actor last Sunday, Jessica Chastain praised her The Eyes of Tammy Faye co-star, Andrew Garfield, on Instagram, lauding the actor’s performance in the film.

Chastain took on the role of the eponymous Tammy Faye Bakkar, with Garfield playing her husband, Jim Bakkar, in this look at the couple’s lives as they build the world’s largest religious broadcasting television channel. The film is based on the documentary of the same name that was released back in 2000, following Tammy Faye as she goes through the rise and fall of her televangelism career. Though the film flopped at the box office, only grossing $2.7 million after the initial release, The Eyes of Tammy Faye has already netted Chastain her SAG award, and she has also been nominated for Best Actress at The Academy Awards this year.

Chastain has reportedly wanted to make this movie for some years now, and telling Tammy’s story has been something of a passion project for her, saying when she won her SAG award, “It was a dream of mine to play Tammy Faye. She was a real trailblazer, and she wrapped her arms around those who were repeatedly cast aside, and she launched herself into decades of LGBTQ love,” adding, “I worked on the project for 10 years, and I hope we made her story the way she would be proud of.”

She also made sure to praise her on-screen husband and supporting cast, saying, “everyone in this room knows that a performance is only as good as the people around you, and so I had the best acting troupe one could have with Andrew Garfield, Vincent D’Onofrio, Cherry Jones. I’m the luckiest person ever” This sentiment was shared again recently, directed specifically at Garfield, on her Instagram post showing pictures of the two at Sunday’s awards.

“No matter how much prep you do, what really matters at the end of the day is who you’re acting opposite of. Being able to react to the brilliant things Andrew Garfield brought to his performance as Jim Bakker was monumental in creating my own. Always grateful to this gem for his generous spirit and an inspiring collaboration.”

Andrew Garfield has certainly been busy in the last year, seeming to release one movie after another with The Eyes of Tammy Faye, SpiderMan: No Way Home, and Tick Tick Boom. All of these movies are nominated for different categories at this year’s Academy Awards, with the latter seeing Garfield nominated for Best Actor for his role as composer, Jonathan Larson, having already won a Golden Globe for the role in the same category.