Jessica Chastain Was 'Superstitious' About Holding Pal Eddie Redmayne's Oscar Before Her Win

Jessica Chastain was cautious about jinxing her Oscar chances prior to her big win on Sunday night.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye star won Best Actress at the 94th annual Academy Awards, using her emotional acceptance speech to bring attention to the crisis of suicide as something that "has touched many families," including hers, "and especially members of the LGBTQ community, who oftentimes feel out of place with their peers."

Backstage afterward, she told reporters that she was "superstitious" about touching Oscars statuettes prior to that night.

"I still can't understand that I'm holding an Oscar," says Chastain, 45. "This is the first time I've held an Oscar. I'm friends with Eddie Redmayne, and I've been to his house in London. Everyone was like, 'Oh, look. His Oscar,' and they all picked it up. I was like, 'I can't pick it up!' I felt superstitious."

"So this is the very first time I've even held it. I have had no thoughts of where it is going to go, but I will respect it for sure wherever it is," she adds.

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Redmayne, 40, won Best Actor in 2015 for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. He and Chastain costar in the upcoming Netflix film The Good Nurse.

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Chastain, who has been nominated twice before for The Help and Zero Dark Thirty, also told reporters this win is "very meaningful to me."

"It was 10 years ago that I got the rights to tell this story. I think that was the first year I was nominated for an Oscar. You know, I had seven films come out in 2011, so to be at the awards ceremony in 2012 was the beginning of my career. And to be here 10 years later with a film I bought the rights to, that I kind of willed into existence is incredibly meaningful."

The biopic, for which Chastain also served as producer, tells the story of Tammy and her first husband Jim Bakker (played by Andrew Garfield), who grew their Christian news program, the PTL Club, into a multimillion dollar industry before it collapsed following a sex scandal involving Jim and Jessica Hahn.

"Also it's very special to be part of a film that means something to me in that it rights an injustice and it reexamines a life," the actress continued. "It is so important to give each other our flowers when we're alive. I feel like we missed that opportunity with Tammy Faye. So it is very special to me. I was texting with her children during the ceremony. I kept texting them. It's a beautiful, beautiful moment, and it means so much to me in terms of my profession, but also in terms of my life and what I'm putting out into the world."