Meet cute! Jessica Chastain’s grandmother Marilyn Herst did not hold back when she got the opportunity to make a lasting first impression on Bradley Cooper.
“A few years ago, I had a party at my house and Bradley Cooper was there. My grandmother is now at the age where she just really doesn’t care, you know? She’s just like, ‘I’m just gonna do whatever I want.’ So in the middle of the party, she just walked over to Bradley and just sat on his lap,” the 355 actress, 44, recalled during her Wednesday, January 5, appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “He looked horrified, actually. He had never met her. He didn’t know who she was.”
Chastain stepped in to clear up Cooper’s confusion. “I saw it kinda happening in slow motion where I was like, ‘No!’” she revealed. “I just started going, ‘It’s my grandma! It’s my grandma!’ Then he was like, ‘OK. Hi, Grandma.’”
The Scenes From a Marriage star explained that she wants to help her grandmother find love, but Herst has her sights set on A-listers.
“I’ve been trying to get her dates for a long time. I mean, it’s been maybe 15 years, 20 years that I’ve been … I used to take pictures of her and put them on Match.com,” Chastain elaborated. “I worked with Al Pacino — she was very excited about that. I took a picture of the two of them together and it was on her bedside table. Matthew McConaughey, she was stoked.”
The Help actress is close with her grandmother, and their bond has only strengthened since Herst moved in with her in April 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“She’s one of my favorite people in the world,” Chastain told WSJ. Magazine in November 2020. “When [the pandemic started], I was in Morocco on a movie and I remember I was texting with her. I was saying, ‘Don’t go to the grocery store,’ and all of this stuff. And then she came to my house at the end of April and it’s been such an incredible opportunity to spend time together.”
The Molly’s Game star commended her grandmother at the time for “how she really runs into her life with open arms,” adding, “I’m very inspired by people who really just — it’s the Nike thing, they just do it. There’s not as much complaining as figuring out how to solve [something]. They’re active.”
While Chastain is eager to set up her grandmother, the Oscar nominee has already found her own happily ever after with husband Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo, whom she wed in June 2017, and their two children that they welcomed in 2018 and 2020.
“I never wanted to get married,” she divulged in the February 2018 issue of WSJ. Magazine. “When I first met my husband, he knew that marriage wasn’t something I was interested in. And then as we got to know each other, the idea of marriage shifted for me. There are some things worth celebrating — and he’s worth celebrating.”
