Jessica Chastain Reveals She Ate Banana Peels in School for Attention

Jessica Chastain‘s experience in school was a little bit bananas.

The Help actress recently looked back on her days in the classroom, where she would eat shocking foods in the cafeteria to turn heads.

“I was an obnoxious kid because I wasn’t getting appropriate attention,” she told The Guardian Dec. 10. “I would do things like eat banana peels in the lunch rooms so kids would notice me.”

Reflecting on that chapter of her life, Jessica noted how her grades altered her perception of herself. She told the outlet, “I had always thought that I wasn’t an intelligent person because I did badly at school.”

But even though Jessica didn’t feel connected to the curriculum, there was an experience from her education that changed the trajectory of her life.

“There was a trip to the Oregon Shakespeare festival and I saw Marco Barricelli play Richard III,” she explained. “Something opened up inside me. It was the strangest thing, that I could be so moved. I had the hugest crush on that actor. I became obsessed with Shakespeare.”