Jessica Chastain turns evil for new role

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Jessica Chastain turns evil for new role

Face2Face: Jessica Chastain discusses her transition from a strong New Yorker in 'A Most Violent Year' to a gothic and mysterious woman in Guillermo del Toro's horror flick 'Crimson Peak'

Audiences can watch Jessica Chastain in a haunting role unlike any she’s done before in "Crimson Peak."

Written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro, who has dubbed his new creation a gothic romance, the story is set in 1901 and follows a woman played by Mia Wasikowska who falls for a mysterious stranger (Tom Hiddleston). She then goes to live in his eerie secret-filled mountaintop house where audiences get to know Chastain’s character, his sister Lucille.

While the film easily falls into the thriller genre, Chastain told FOX411 their work went beyond that.

"We weren’t thinking about playing it as a certain genre. We were just trying to play the characters as realistically as possible and with Lucille, I couldn’t just show up and kind of do this like ‘Hahaha I’m going to get you,' you know, character. I had to really understand, why does she do these terrible things, what does that come from, what happened to her when she was a child, what is she trying to achieve, and for me, the movie is so much about love. Lucille, every act she does in the movie is a way of her trying to give and to receive love, and to feel intimacy with another person."

The actress admitted it was an intense process taking on such a dark role.

"Yeah, I completely underestimated the darkness of the character and where I would have to go," she shared. "I did this at the same time as the film 'A Most Violent Year' so I was flying back and forth and I loved playing that character in 'A Most Violent Year.' She was so open and grounded and sensual...and then I would fly to Toronto for Lucille and everything about her was closed, even the accents, so much about consonants, the costumes are really constrictive. So yeah, I underestimated how difficult it was going to be and it actually, playing the character, made me very depressed for a while...it took a toll on me."

As the movie delves into the supernatural, Chastain shared that she believes in ghosts. Plus having now done two horror films, when it comes to genre movies in general, she shared she’s a fan as both an audience member and as an actress as she “finds that the roles for women are usually really good in them.”

Click for more of our interview with Jessica Chastain in the FOX411 FACE2FACE video above. “Crimson Peak” is in theaters October 16.