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family business
Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal doesn’t scare easily. Garth Pearce reports on one of Hollywood’s brightest talents
interview
Maggie Gyllenhaal admits that she put her future at risk by taking a film role which was too hot to handle for every twentysomething star in Hollywood. But the result, Secretary, in which she played a masochist, has proved to be a key to the big-time.
She now delivers a scene- stealing performance as Giselle alongside Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles and Marcia Gay Harden in the star-laden Mona Lisa Smile. Her character in the film, set in 1953 in the rarefied New England atmosphere of Wellesley College - at the time America’s most prestigious female-only college – once again defies convention.
Giselle’s brazenly open about her sexuality, in contrast to the self-declared virgins or a surpris- ingly high number of married and engaged girls. She also has an affair with one of the college lec- turers (Dominic West). And despite wearing her heart not so much on her sleeve, but embla- zoned across her forehead, she still manages to deliver world- weary lines on love and sex.
“I like the darkness and strangeness of such roles,” she says. “My character is not afraid of her sexuality. She is also not afraid of the consequences. But after accepting a film like Secretary, agreeing to be in Mona Lisa Smile was easy. I don’t scare easily.”
When we meet, Gyllenhaal looks like the sort of woman who doesn’t scare at all. She is 5ft 9 inches tall, with a pretty face and unwavering blue eyes, which are framed by dark brown hair. Her
background is strictly street smart - she’s lived in both Los Angeles and New York - with an Ivy League Education. She has an English degree from Columbia University, plus training at RADA, studying classical theatre.
She’s also no wannabe, do- what-it-takes actress, either. Her father, Stephen Gyllenhaal, directed films like A Dangerous Woman and Waterland, in which she made an appearance as a 14 year-old. Her writer mother, Naomi Foner, was Oscar-nominat- ed for Running On Empty, and her brother Jake, three years Maggie’s junior, is a successful young actor too.
“I like to think I know the differ- ence between a good script and one which pretends to be some- thing it isn’t,” she says. “That is what turned me on to Secretary. I had already heard a lot of actresses had rejected it. Even my own agent sent me a note: ‘You might be appalled by this.’ But I was fascinated.”
The script, directed by Steven Shainberg from a short story by Mary Gaitskill about an S&M love match between office col- leagues (the secretary and her boss, played by James Spader), had languished for two years.
But Gyllenhaal, whose only claim to fame at that point among a crop of modest film appearances was opposite Jake in Donnie Darko, actively cam- paigned to get the lead role.
“The script was really good and spot on,” she recalls. “I was so excited that when I was about three-quarters of the way through I called my agent and said: ‘I will do it.’ Then, the very next scene I
read was when he masturbates on me. I did stop and think for a moment. The only thing that bothered me was how it could turn out in the wrong hands.”
But there is a sense that Gyllenhaal knew exactly what she was doing. At the core of her bright, pleasant manner, there is a sharpness and shrewdness. The film won the jury prize for originali- ty at the Sundance Film Festival, a personal award for best break- through actress from the American National Film Board and a Golden Globe nomination for best actress.
The gamble paid off, but then Gyllenhaal made sure the dice were weighted in her favour. “It could have ended up as a sex romp, with the male fantasy of a woman who likes being submis- sive,” she says. “So it was impor- tant to spend a lot of time with the director, talking it through, before we reached the first day of filming.
“We spent two hours together, every day,” she relates. “I want- ed to go through it in an intellec- tual way, scene by scene. We would regularly argue. He says that we would disagree and I would fly at him and say: ‘This is too much of a fantasy.’”
The director of Mona Lisa Smile, Britain’s Mike Newell, also discovered that Gyllenhaal likes to prepare very carefully. “She is very bright,” he reports. “She wants to cover all the angles and make sure that she fulfils the requirements of her character in every way. It is an ensemble piece, so each of them deliver a specific part of a jigsaw.”
Gyllenhaal, whose previous films include Penny Marshall’s
Riding In Cars With Boys and John Waters’ Hollywood satire, Cecil B. Demented - she played a Satan- worshipping make-up artist - seems to know exactly what she is doing. “People remember the bad girl,” she says, with a smile. “I like being bad myself.”
Her self-exploration has led to buying her own apartment in New York and living alone for the first time in her life. “I was either with parents, girlfriends at college or my boyfriend,” she says. “I found that I was suddenly inter- ested in making a home and enjoying my own space, which was strictly mine. My own kitchen, my own couch, stuff on the walls, my own telephone number.”
She slipped that number to an actor she met at a dinner party and now, it seems, they are an item. “It was love at first sight,” she says. “I was immediately taken with him at a point I was not looking for anything. It is really important for me being in love. I feel happier.”
She is also happy with the criti- cal reaction to her stand-out per- formance in Mona Lisa Smile [which opens next month].
“I always had to audition for every movie,” she says. “Now, I get offered movies directly. And although the ones I really want are the same as everyone else wants, at least I am among those who will be considered.”
Photos left: Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary and, centre and right, in Mona Lisa Smile
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