Jessica Chastain is one of Hollywood’s most gifted actors, and her achievements are all the more astounding when you consider what she had to overcome in order to achieve success.
The actress Molly’s Game was born on March 24, 1977, to young parents. Jerri Chastain, her mother, was a 16-year-old high school student, and Michael Monasterio, her father, was a 20-year-old aspiring rock musician, according to the Daily Mail.
Juliet Chastain was born to the couple in 1979, but Jerri took the children and left Monasterio shortly after she was born.
Jessica’s alienation from her biological father began at this point. Monasterio’s name is not even on the celebrity’s birth certificate, according to a source who talked to the Daily News, and there are no extant images of the father and daughter together.
Jessica and her younger sister struggled to be raised by a young, single mother of two. The family was having financial difficulties.
According to Radar, Jessica has never publicly acknowledged Monasterio as her biological father, but she has publicly thanked her stepfather, Michael Hastey.
Monasterio died in 2013 from problems related to pneumonia, and a source told Star Magazine (via the Daily Mail) that “it hurt his heart that she never addressed his existence.”
According to Michael Monasterio’s Facebook posts, Jessica Chastain never tried to reconcile with her father before his death in 2013, but her sister Juliet did.