Jessica Chastain stuns fans with extreme makeover as she ditches trademark red locks and debuts blonde bob

There's a whole new Jessica Chastain in Hollywood. 

The star, 49, showed off a brand new look while appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday - and she's no longer a redhead. 

Chastain has now swapped out her signature fiery locks for platinum blonde. 

'I will say we do have a lot of fun!' she told Kimmel. 

'I’ve always had a lot of fun,' Chastain, who was promoting her new film Other Mommy, added. 'It is funny being a blonde.'

Chastain decided to make the change after testing out the hair color for three months on the set of The Off Weeks. 

The reaction from people has been interesting, with Chastain admitting she feels she is expected to be 'soft and demure' as a blonde.  

'I mean, a red head, you can be quite, you know, sassy,' she said.

'It’s very special to be a redhead, but it’s also nice to have a change every once in a while. And now, you know, when I’m a little bit sassier than normal, people look at me, like, shocked,' she said. 

'Like, they expect me to be soft and demure.'

Chastain was inspired to take the plunge after trying out the hair color for three months on the set of the show The Off Weeks.  

'I just played a part where I had a very similar hair color in a wig and so, I guess I got to test drive the hair for three months. And I was like, "All right, I’m going I’m going for it!"' she said. 

Across various platforms, fans headed to the comments section to weigh in on the new look.  

'Wow! Jessica, blonde! There is nothing she cannot do!' one said.  

'She looks like Cate Blanchette (esp in Nightmare Alley) and Gwen Stefani with that hair,' a commenter wrote. 

'Blondly beautiful,' another posted.  

'At least during this blonde phase, no one would confuse Chastain w/ Bryce Dallas Howard,' a netizen posted.

'She reminds me of Eva Marie Saint with her hairdo love it. And love her, ' another posted. 

'Love the hair do,' one said. 

'Jessica Chastain looks so good with blonde hair,' another said. 

It's not the first time Chastain has tried out blonde hair color.

In 2023, she attended the Met Gala rocking platinum locks with an edgy black outfit - a look she embraced for making her feel 'quite villainess.' 

'I prefer the red just because it's more me,' she told Access Hollywood. 'But the greatest thing about what we do is we get to pretend to be other people, and I felt quite villainess, you know, with the sunglasses and the fabulous dress and jewelry and rings.' 

Chastain recently admitted the new hair color marks her first time actually dying her hair.  

'I have never dyed my hair – and it was such an experience,' she told Net-A-Porter with a laugh. 'It wasn’t that I didn’t dye my hair because I was worried about other people. Just the worry of, like, "Am I going to ruin my hair?" Now I just feel like, "I’ve never done this; I want to try it". It feels good to be a blonde.”

'I don’t think blondes have more fun, because I’m having the same amount of fun I had before! But it feels good,' she said.  

Chastain is no stranger to undergoing a transformation, at least on camera. 

In 2022 she received an Oscar for playing Tammy Faye Bakker, the late televangelist who was known for caking her face in make-up, in The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

The Molly's Game star revealed it once took her seven-and-a-half hours to have the make-up applied, and it got 'so heavy and hot', Chastain worried about her circulation.

She told the LA Times: 'I got to set and I was so panicky. 'I started to have hot flushes because it's so heavy and hot. I was afraid.

'It was like going on a long-distance flight every day. Because if it takes seven and a half hours to put on, it's going to take at least two hours to get off. It was concerning to me.'