Jessica Chastain reveals she dropped out of high school: I thought I wasn’t intelligent

Two-time Academy Award-nominee Jessica Chastain revealed today that her schooling didn’t exactly put on her on the track to success.

“Nobody knows this about me: I dropped out of high school. I was not a hard worker. I was a terrible student,” the 37-year-old told Entertainment Weekly.

Jessica, who had a turbulent home life, explained she would cut school to just sit in her car and read Shakespeare.

“It wasn’t that I just dropped out and never went back — at the end of the year I had too many absences to graduate,” she said. As a result, she didn’t think much of herself. “I thought that I wasn’t an intelligent person because I did so poorly.”

Years later, Jessica received her adult diploma and earned a scholarship from Robin Williams to attend Juilliard based on her work in community theater. She went on to get Oscar nominations for The Help and Zero Dark Thirty. Now she wants other students who may be struggling in classes to know grades aren’t always representative of intelligence.

“There are kids out there that aren’t doing well in school — and I hope they never think it means they’re stupid,” she said. “It’s all about finding where your interest lies and finding what you’re good at.”