Jessica Chastain says she ate banana peels for attention when she was a 'weirdo' in elementary school

• Jessica Chastain opened up about being an outcast as a child on the "WTF with Marc Maron" podcast.
• She told Maron she used to eat fruit peels while at school "because it made people notice me."

Jessica Chastain confessed to a strange habit she had in elementary school on a new episode of the "WTF with Marc Maron" podcast.

Around the 40-minute mark of the podcast, Chastain recalled "eating orange peels and banana peels" in the school cafeteria because "it made people notice me." She added that she knew the habit was "terrible," but she was desperate for attention at the time.

The "Eyes Of Tammy Faye" star said that at the time she didn't mind if the attention she got was for "being a weirdo" because "at least I was existing, I'm something." She described herself as "nerdy" and "clueless" at the time, and remembered having a perm that she said made her look like Little Orphan Annie.

Chastain said she developed more confidence in junior high, when she began taking theater classes and recognized her talent as an actor. The eventual Academy Award winner, who dropped out of high school and later got her adult diploma, ultimately graduated from the prestigious Juilliard School in 2003, thanks to a scholarship for students that Robin Williams set up there.

Elsewhere on the podcast, Chastain opened up about her "very lean" childhood with her single mother, Jerri Hastey, her brother Will Chastain, and her younger sister Juliet Chastain, who died by suicide at the age of 24 in 2003 after experiencing addiction issues.

She told Maron she didn't exactly realize how much Hastey struggled to put food on the table at times until she learned about the Sam Shepard play "Curse of the Starving Class" and related to a character who would often open his refrigerator and look inside it, even though he knew there was no food there.

"That was the first time I realized, I was like, 'Oh my God, that's us,'" she recalled.