Jessica Chastain teases career shift with new Harvard degree

Jessica Chastain wants to take over the world when she graduates from Harvard University.

Chastain has gone back to school and is pursuing a degree in public administration at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

The Oscar winner is already a graduate of The Juilliard School, where she studied acting, and even received an honorary doctorate from the school in 2024.

In her recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, she revealed why she went back to school mid-career.

"I was just wanting to learn new things. And you know what? My favorite class ended up being quantitative methods, which is like statistics," she admitted.

"And at Juilliard, you know, we never... As theater nerds we never got to learn stuff like that. So I am a secret nerd. I got the hots for, like, scatter graphs and, like, bell curves," the Interstellar star said.

When asked what she wants to do with the degree, she quipped, "My goal is to take over the world."

However, Chastain’s college experience wasn’t anything like a normal student. She shared, "My dorm was the Charles Hotel. My RA was housekeeping."

Jessica Chastain is promoting her new show The Savant, in which she plays an undercover investigator trying to prevent extremism-inspired crimes.