Maggie Gyllenhaal
Maggie Gyllenhaal
Margalit Ruth "Maggie" Gyllenhaal is an American actress. She is the daughter of filmmakers Stephen Gyllenhaal and Naomi Achs and the older sister of actor Jake Gyllenhaal. She began her film career as a teenager with roles in her father's films and appeared alongside her brother in the psychological horror film Donnie Darko. She garnered critical praise for starring as Lee Holloway in Secretary, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. For her performance in Sherrybaby, she...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth16 November 1977
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
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.
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.