Movie Makeover

Jessica Chastain Will Play Tammy Faye Bakker in Upcoming Film, Eyelashes and All

It's almost impossible to picture her in the late televangelist's signature makeup.
Tammy Faye Bakker Messner and Jessica Chastain
Getty Images

Before the Met Gala's unofficial secondary theme of next-level eyelashes, before it was common for eyelash extensions to be part of everyday beauty looks, before Instagrammers came up with some of the most creative and unusual eye fringe, one person was synonymous with over-the-top eyelashes, and that's the late televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker — or as she was later known after remarrying, Tammy Faye Messner. Obviously much more than just a lover of cosmetics, Bakker was always closely associated with heavy-handed makeup, and now Jessica Chastain is about to find out what that bold beauty look felt like.

Variety reports that Chastain has been cast as Messner in the aptly named new film The Eyes of Tammy Faye. The biopic, based on the 2000 documentary of the same title, focuses on the bizarre and scandalous rise and fall of Messner and her husband, fellow televangelist Jim Bakker, who will be played by Andrew Garfield. And while the movie will very likely cover everything from Bakker's fraud conviction to the ways Messner's views on topics like gay rights and HIV differed from that of many in the evangelical community, it would be impossible to ignore her signature makeup.

Ron Davis/Getty Images

Messner felt most herself with her heavy makeup, and especially her false eyelashes and mascara, which would often run down her face in tears during her emotional televised sermons. “Without my eyelashes, I wouldn’t be Tammy Faye,” she reportedly and quite famously once told a makeup artist, who asked her to go without her signature lash look — a look she uncompromisingly wore until she died of cancer in 2007.

It's hard to picture Chastain, known for her elegant, low-key beauty, in Messner's makeup, but we have no doubt the award-winning actress will truly nail the transformation.


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