As her new movie opens, Maggie Gyllenhaal says she’s done playing the quirky girlfriend role. She talks to Rachel Syme about annoying liberal moms, acting with her hubby, and the biggest surprise of parenthood.
Maggie Gyllenhaal would like you to know that she is no longer interested in playing “the quirky girlfriend” in movies. “I’m exhausted with that!” she says, driving in London to the set of the upcoming Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, where she will be directed by fellow actress Emma Thompson. “I’m 31 now, and I’m so glad to be a woman now, to be a mother, to finally be old enough to play some of the really interesting parts that are out there. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the nine years of this decade, you know? I would like to keep doing it for my whole life—this job is a great match for me. So I am growing right along with it.”
“When Ramona was an infant, we thought, ‘Oh, we’re going to do everything perfectly, and the most naturally,’ and that’s not possible.”
Though some actresses growing out of their ingénue years insist on their own longevity but don’t have the chops to back it up, the words tumbling out of Gyllenhaal’s mouth make perfect sense: She is ideally suited to acting, and we have no desire to see her fade away.
In fact, she seems to gain steam and credibility every year, hurtling toward that small constellation of untouchables—the matriarchs of which include Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett and younger inductees like Kate Winslet—that are simply good in every role they take on.
And though Gyllenhaal is still in the early stages of becoming a full-fledged star (her unconventional beauty and intensity on screen are the types of advantages that will only help her with age), she has that sort of Hollywood buzz around her name that makes a film release more exciting just by her participation in it.
Her latest film, Away We Go, is gathering buzz for a bevy of reasons—a screenplay by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, direction by Sam Mendes, the leads: The Office’s John Krasinski and SNL’s Maya Rudolph as a pregnant couple in search of a new home, the twee soundtrack by folk singer Alexi Murdoch—but Gyllenhaal’s small part manages to stand out amidst these elements.
She plays a hippie-dippy, trust-funded college professor who refuses to put her babies in strollers (“I love my babies,” she says in the film. “Why would I want to push them away from me?”) and embodies the most frightening of progressive parental clichés: breastfeeding other women’s children, a communal bed that houses her husband and toddlers, and the cultural insensitivity that can only come from being white, privileged, and faux-progressive.
Gyllenhaal thrives in the role—though she took it on as a favor to Mendes after another actress dropped out, it’s hard to imagine another actress having the same droll timing and dreamy nonchalance in the part.
Maggie Gyllenhaal would like you to know that she is no longer interested in playing “the quirky girlfriend” in movies. “I’m exhausted with that!” she says, driving in London to the set of the upcoming Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, where she will be directed by fellow actress Emma Thompson. “I’m 31 now, and I’m so glad to be a woman now, to be a mother, to finally be old enough to play some of the really interesting parts that are out there. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the nine years of this decade, you know? I would like to keep doing it for my whole life—this job is a great match for me. So I am growing right along with it.”
“When Ramona was an infant, we thought, ‘Oh, we’re going to do everything perfectly, and the most naturally,’ and that’s not possible.”
Though some actresses growing out of their ingénue years insist on their own longevity but don’t have the chops to back it up, the words tumbling out of Gyllenhaal’s mouth make perfect sense: She is ideally suited to acting, and we have no desire to see her fade away.
In fact, she seems to gain steam and credibility every year, hurtling toward that small constellation of untouchables—the matriarchs of which include Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett and younger inductees like Kate Winslet—that are simply good in every role they take on.
And though Gyllenhaal is still in the early stages of becoming a full-fledged star (her unconventional beauty and intensity on screen are the types of advantages that will only help her with age), she has that sort of Hollywood buzz around her name that makes a film release more exciting just by her participation in it.
Her latest film, Away We Go, is gathering buzz for a bevy of reasons—a screenplay by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, direction by Sam Mendes, the leads: The Office’s John Krasinski and SNL’s Maya Rudolph as a pregnant couple in search of a new home, the twee soundtrack by folk singer Alexi Murdoch—but Gyllenhaal’s small part manages to stand out amidst these elements.
She plays a hippie-dippy, trust-funded college professor who refuses to put her babies in strollers (“I love my babies,” she says in the film. “Why would I want to push them away from me?”) and embodies the most frightening of progressive parental clichés: breastfeeding other women’s children, a communal bed that houses her husband and toddlers, and the cultural insensitivity that can only come from being white, privileged, and faux-progressive.
Gyllenhaal thrives in the role—though she took it on as a favor to Mendes after another actress dropped out, it’s hard to imagine another actress having the same droll timing and dreamy nonchalance in the part.
