Jessica Chastain has won the Oscar for best actress at the 94th Academy Awards, currently under way at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
Chastain won the prize for her role as Tammy Faye Bakker, wife of controversial televangelist Jim Bakker, in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a biopic that outlined the Bakkers’ troubled marriage and Tammy Faye’s support for LGBTQ+ rights. The film was directed by Michael Showalter and features Andrew Garfield as Jim Bakker, and Cherry Jones as Tammy Faye’s mother, Rachel.
Chastain alluded to Bakker’s activism for LGBTQ+ rights in her speech, as she touched on the topic of LGBTQ+ youth suicide, which has “touched many families, and it’s touched mine”.