2011 is the Year of Jessica Chastain. Moviegoers were introduced to her in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and then a wider audience got to know her as Celia Foote in the blockbuster hit, The Help. By the time 2011 is over she'll also have appeared in Take Shelter, Coriolanus, and Texas Killing Fields. And on August 31, 2011 Focus Features is releasing The Debt, a dramatic thriller in which Chastain plays a Mossad agent who's tasked with tracking down a Nazi war criminal in East Berlin in the mid-'60s.

The film switches back and forth between the 1960s with Chastain, Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas as the team in charge of capturing Dieter Vogel, and 1997 with Helen Mirren, Ciaran Hinds, and Tom Wilkinson playing the same characters, retired and harboring a secret they've shared for 30 years.

At the LA press day for The Debt, the super-busy Chastain talked about her Krav Maga training, her co-stars, and how her life has changed this year.

On training for The Debt versus wearing '60s clothes in The Help:

Jessica Chastain: "Both are uncomfortable, but it is funny, there's something about being in the South because I loved being able to eat whatever I wanted and kind of be yourself [when] there's more sensuality to you. It's really fun to be that. The heat in Mississippi, I think we filmed that in July in Mississippi, and so the heat with those girdles was a bit tough. And especially that the outfit was so tight that they had to build a leaning board for me in that red dress. I couldn't sit down in it because I was so sucked in in the waist to give me that hourglass.

So, they built me a leaning board and all the girls would be sitting around in the green room, drinking their coffee or water and people would be like, 'Do you want a water,' and I was like, 'No, no, no,' because I couldn't even use the restroom and take that dress on and off. It was actually more fun than anything because everyone was laughing about it. With Krav Maga, that's just fun because I was a dancer as a kid and fight scenes, I realized, are like dance scenes. Everyone counts in their head silently and you don't really hit each other if you're lucky. So, it's good."

On the Krav Maga training process:

Jessica Chastain: "I became kind of obsessed with it. I had four months of training before, and before that I never really thought about myself as a fighter. I would come back from training and my best friend would be home and I'd be like, 'Come on. Come at me with a knife.' So, we'd do it. She'd have a pencil in her hand and I'd pin her, just try to see if I could remember things and do it on my own without Roy [Taylor], my teacher, telling me what to do. So, I became a little bit of a monster, trying to always take someone down to the ground, see how fast you could do it."

Analyzing that specific fighting style:

Jessica Chastain: "What I was told, it's not necessarily simple to learn, but in my very first session they said, 'Krav Maga is not about self defense. It's about killing your opponent as quickly as possible.' It's just about taking them out. So, it's incredibly, not simple, but it's quick in the moves. It's about someone coming at you with a gun, how to just twist the gun and shoot them, those kinds of things. If they have a knife, you take the knife and you're able to bend their arm to cut their throat or their eyes or all these things. So, we made this movie two and a half years ago, and so I haven't really been Krav Maga'ing a lot. However, I did just do The Wettest County with Tom Hardy and Tom loves to fight. So, we'd be on set in our '30s clothing and Tom would take a stance and I would just punch him back. So, I did get to work on my Krav Maga."

On working with Helen Mirren who plays the older version of her character:

Jessica Chastain: "I knew that she was attached to play Rachel when I first met with John Madden. I looked her up and found all of her statistics and I saw that she was 5'4", and so I went to John and I was like, 'Just so you know, we're the same height.' I was really like, 'This is why it's perfect.' Then once I got cast I had the fear of, 'I have to play the younger version of Helen Mirren. That's impossible.' She's one of a kind. She's a force to be reckoned with and is unbelievable."

"So, I did a lot of things. I watched all of her interviews on YouTube. I actually found one of her when she was younger which was really beneficial for me because my idea of Helen Mirren was just this grand, you know, solid foundation, like force of a woman. When I saw this interview with her when she was younger, her voice a little bit higher and she was a little bit unsure of herself, kind of. She didn't have the confidence that she has now. I saw that and I thought, 'Okay, there's an in because Rachel doesn't have to be an imitation of what Helen is now.' She's the younger version of that."

"Then we met and talked about her backstory, where Rachel came from and how perhaps she was orphaned, what happened to her family. We worked with a dialect coach together. We worked on mannerisms that we might use. It's funny. It's kind of like a press junket, but there are a couple of scenes in The Debt where they ask Rachel a question. 'What were you thinking at that time,' and Rachel says, 'I thought about my mother and that helped me get through.' My character says it and Helen's character says it, and so this is just a memorized answer that she says as if she's been saying the same thing for 30 years. So, we decided that on the word mother that we were both going to [do it the exact same way]. So, we worked on a lot of little tiny, tiny elements that probably if you see the film you wouldn't necessarily catch unless you saw it more than once. I'm also a crazy researcher and read her biography. I did so much to try to get to know Helen as much as I could."

On her scenes playing a patient of suspected Nazi war criminal/gynecologist Dr. Doktor Bernhardt [played by Jesper Christensen]:

Jessica Chastain: "I thought especially in those scenes like Rachel because Rachel, and we lead up to it before, she's nervous about it and doesn't know what's going to happen and doesn't know if he'll see something weird in her German and think her accent was a bit funny, like, 'Where are you from?' She's afraid of what could come from that but then also, I guess as an actress, she knows that she can use that to her benefit. It's uncomfortable for a woman to be in that position and so he can read that as, 'Oh, she's just shy and uncomfortable.' So, I didn't feel in playing Rachel that I had to be this, like, 'Oh, I'm okay. She's really strong.' She got to be more honest about the situation because it helped make it believable, that she was a young mother trying to have a baby."

"I have to say though that I love so much the scene where I stab him in the neck every time I see the movie because I hated filming those scenes. Of course I'm not really naked or anything like that, but as an actress, for like a week, I'm on my back with my legs in these stupid stirrups. I love Jesper Christensen. He's the nicest man, but it's like every time I talk to him it's between my legs and it's so uncomfortable and awful. So, at the end in that scene, you can see that I'm just so ready to take him down."

"We filmed those scenes in chronological order. So, we started with the first visit and then to the second visit and then to her capturing him. That was the last thing that I filmed on the film."

On handling the demands of all of her 2011 films:

Jessica Chastain: "What's funny is that my life really hasn't changed. I guess the most different [aspect] is the premieres and the press that I'm doing, but normally I'm very rarely recognized. Someone came up to me on the street and they loved Tree of Life. That happened once. So, I think it's great. When someone recognizes me and they like the film, it's wonderful to have the opportunity to talk to them about it especially since I haven't really been able to talk about what I'm doing for the past four years. But then also I'm really lucky because my goal as an actor is to kind of disappear into the characters that I'm playing. I think sometimes that if everyone knows who you are, then you're not really able to do that. I mean, I only have two movies out. I have seven total this year, and so we'll see how long it is, but right now that's where it is."

"The one good thing is that I love talking about acting. I'm just such a fan of actors and filmmakers and I try to choose roles where I get to talk to great actors about acting and learn. So, for me the press aspect is great because I love talking about other people and their performances and their process and all of that."

"I'm not going to lie, I just got my schedule for September and it's really a bit daunting because I have two films in every festival. So, Deauville, Venice, Toronto...I think that's it. But it's still two films in the festivals and then I also have an international press tour and I have press for Take Shelter, which is coming out at the end of September. And then I also have to prep a movie that I start October 4th, Mama. So, I am starting to get a little nervous. I've never worked before where I've been on a press situation and then, like, a week later started shooting a film. So, I'm trying to start prep for that film now and trying to juggle all the things. We'll see when you guys see my performance in the next film if it worked."

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The Debt hits theaters on August 31, 2011.