Maggie Gyllenhaal Quotations

I studied English literature; I took 2 independent religion classes, but I wasn't a religion major really.

Who can I trust? You have to invest in somebody and chances are you're probably going to invest in somebody who's going to deceive you. I've been conned a couple of times, but now I'm a little more savvy.

I feel there is no shortage of real interesting women's roles. But I found them and did all of them just now.

I liked that idea. Someone who's trying to perform herself and not succeeding.

You're not going to do good work if you're not choosing something because it inspires you.

I want to have some effect on the way the world works in whatever way I can, and I also want to have the power to help get the movies that I think are important made.

I'm still trying to figure out what the right line is between myself and the people I play. Sometimes I go too far one way or too far the other.

I feel so gratified about having finished college. I learned how to articulate myself. It gave me confidence more than anything. And also the ability to analyze the text.

On a film, I was always acting. I was either changing my clothes really quickly and wiping off the lipstick and putting on the other lipstick and then working constantly, constantly.

A big part of being an actress specifically is feeling entitled to your artistic opinion, feeling that it means something, and being able to stand by it.

I think Secretary's funny, it is about sex, and there's a lot of sex in it, sex is the key, but you're talking about a lot of other complicated things.

I think sex is very interesting for most people, but I'm interested in sex as a way of communication, I'm not that interested in the fantasy version of a sex scene.

Most people are interested in seeing 27-year-old women who are in movies somehow connected to sex. It's interesting to everyone. Especially little movies that are having trouble getting made, there's always sex.

There was something to me that was really compelling about that woman, already knowing she couldn't get pregnant. When I made that movie I was maybe 24, and to be 24 and already know you can't get pregnant, that was really interesting to me.

You have a right to your opinion about the work that you're doing. An artist is as equally important as the director. If you believe that, you can work in any circumstances.

A play is much easier to maintain your personal life with because if you're rehearsing, you're working like from 11 to 6 or 11 to 5 and you get to have your whole morning and your whole evening. When you're doing the play, you have all day.

I don't see that many movies lately that are actually about something, that are trying to challenge something about the way that people interact.

I made a movie where I played a girl that just got out of prison and we shot it very very quickly but very intensely-that took me a long time to get over.

Ten years ago, it was really difficult for a young actress to walk onto a set and disagree with the director and having that be OK and have a conversation about it and everyone be cool with it.

We were lounging around in this beautiful house in LA, and I'm coming from NY, so sometimes when we weren't working I would just sit on those folding chairs.

I'm excited to be a part of this important project. Will and John are genuine heroes and I think their wives, Allison and Donna, are heroes, too. I feel privileged to be part of a project that will remember how we all came together on that day.

One of the things I think is really problematic about something like [government] spyware is that it isn't transparent - because of that anonymity and that secrecy, there aren't laws to regulate it.

We have our phones right by our beds, right next to us in our most exposed, vulnerable moments. And yet the government could have been collecting information from our phones at any moment. I think that basically as humans, we feel that's a violation.

If you're going to play a hooker in a movie, the movie has to have the perspective, of course, that it isn't such a great thing. Probably the only way to really play a hooker well is to believe you're doing something that's good. But at the same time, the movie can't have that point of view.

Sometimes I'll read things in the script and think, "That's not how humans behave," or "I don't understand how to do that role and make it seem like I'm not some kind of strange alien or on a sitcom." I don't get it, and when I feel that way, I have to listen to my instinct. My initial instinct does lead me in a direction that I can trust.

I said to Ramona [my daughter] once ... you should never look yourself up on the Internet. It's something I've learned.

Being a mother has absolutely forced me. You have to write things down and have systems for all of it. And then you set up systems and you realize they don't work.

There are two ways to be cool: One is to be disinterested and make it seem like you must be doing something much more interesting than everybody else if you are this disinterested. The other is to be extremely interested. You are not trying to please anyone, but you are really invested are really focused.

Someone who's 26, 27, has a very different relationship to sex than someone who's 30.

Every actor has to find space where they are free, in order to do good work.

Now, there are roles which are capturing a vibrant moment in an older woman's life. There was a time when those interesting roles stopped at 28. A few years ago we would have been finished by our age.

I am looking for movies that are actually about something and that are questioning something. Movies that are provocative in some way and I am also looking for roles that I think will force me to grow or learn something about myself or the world in order to play them well.

I do seem to have a bit of a predilection for movies that say something transgressive.

I really want my kids to feel, is that they can be themselves in the world.

Some people would say you need what you need to work, but I need very little to work, because I learned how to make movies on tiny movies. It's all kind of easy for me.

I didn't think at all about my body until after I stopped nursing. When I was nursing, my body was my daughter's, I didn't even think about it. Then I finished nursing, and I was kind of like "Oh, huh, wow, my body's so different."

These past couple of years have been about learning to not sabotage myself in a subtler way - for instance, even just by putting moisturiser on when I get out of the shower. Learning to honour myself and believing that I'm worth taking care of.

You're invited to tons of parties, and you'll wear these shoes and that dress, and it can be enticing, but I think it also sucks you dry. If you do it a little, sure, it's fun, but too much and you start to lose your footing.

Sometimes things go really well, and sometimes they don't, and it's not ultimately the most important thing.

I remember people saying, "Believe me, everything in your life is going to change..." And I thought, "Why? That's such a bourgeois way of thinking." And then you have a child and yes, everything changes. It affects the way we live, what we do, and where we go - everything. And I wouldn't have in any other way.

I'm 37 and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55. It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh.

Mainstream Hollywood makes a few good movies a year. And in order to be in one of those, you have to be one of five people. Hollywood makes many bad movies too, which I'm not interested in being a part of. But there are only a few good independent movies a year, and many, many bad ones. I want to be in good movies, and I want people to see them.

I'm pretty good at indulging myself. I'm about to go travel for a week. I like to get massaged, go into steam rooms. I take care of myself.

The real test will be having a family; when I have a family you have to come home, you have to eat dinner with your kids.

I'm playing somebody who is a recovering drug addict who got out of prison. It takes place in 2 weeks-the 1st 2 weeks I'm out of prison.

I was thinking about how people were upset about the information that came out from Snowden about the NSA - many people were upset, including myself. But I was kind of surprised by how little we did about it - how little fighting we did.

I would like to have a home in the country that I could go to. First in this country and the other in the Mediterranean.

There is a need, especially right now in America, to be a bit provocative.

I would like to do a big movie that many, many people see but I just know I would be miserable if it didn't have something to it.

I think most human beings, even if you're in a situation that's constricting or complicated or hard, they try to survive.

Acting is really important to me, so I think it would be really hard for me to do something I didn't believe in.

If I've learned anything as a mom with a daughter who's three, I've learned that you cannot judge the way another person is raising their kid. Everybody is just doing the best they can. It's hard to be a mom.

I don't even notice the advertisement that comes up on my screen. I'm a smart person and it's just something I've just blacked out because it doesn't seem right to me.

People write things in newspapers about me that aren't true - or that are true. They take pictures of my kids on the way to school. I get a little bit inured to it in a way that I think most people probably aren't.

I have a couple of girlfriends who are like, healing. We take care of each other. They know when I need to be taken care of.

I don't feel that way now. I don't want to make movies for the 10 people who feel exactly the same way about the world that I do. I want to make movies that many, many people see, and I want to say something that I believe is important in a way that people who don't agree with me can hear. And that involves making different kinds of choices, but it's not like a compromise that I'm making. It's that something else interests me, something else is appealing to me.

I find myself more and more interested only in roles which move the world forward.

To get people emotionally involved in something intellectual and political is important.

I don't think there are that many parts I could say unequivocally "I would not play that," but there's lots of parts I read and I think, "I don't really want to do that. I don't really think that's how women act."

A lot of actresses are doing incredible work right now, playing real women, complicated women. I don't feel despairing at all. And I'm more looking with hope for something fascinating.

I want roles that challenge people to question where they are in life.

Honestly, I'm always aware of the political implications of the movies that I make.

Having an education is invaluable.

I've noticed a lot of people talking about the wealth of roles for powerful women in television lately. And when I look around the room at the women here and I think about the performances that I've watched this year, what I see actually are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not. Sometimes sexy and sometimes not. Sometimes honourable and sometimes not. And what I think is new is the wealth of roles for actual women in television and in film. That's what I think is revolutionary and evolutionary and it's what turning me on.

What I think is new is the wealth of roles for actual women in television and in film. That's what I think is revolutionary and evolutionary.