Photo: Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
Maggie Gyllenhaalis shedding light on the treatment of actresses in Hollywood.
The Oscar-nominated actress, 44, has starred in films likeThe Dark Knight,SecretaryandStranger Than Fiction, and she makes her directorial debut withThe Lost Daughter, which she also wrote. Speaking withThe New York Times, Gyllenhaal said it’s “very rare” an actress' ideas are valued while making a movie.
“Olivia really didn’t like to talk about much,” she said of working withOlivia Colman, who won an Oscar in 2019, onThe Lost Daughter. “I wonder, actually, if it’s because it was relatively recently that she got power as an actress, if she feels similarly to the way I feel as an actress, which is it’s very rare that somebody values my ideas.”
Gyllenhaal also discussed adapting Elena Ferrante’s 2006 novel to play as more of a horror-thriller onscreen.
“I wanted it to be a thriller. The book is not really a thriller, but I amped that up because I thought it would ultimately give me more artistic freedom,” she explained. “I wanted to even dare myself to move it into horror, a horror movie about the internal workings of her mind. ‘She’s not bad, she’s like you.’ And I liked the idea of having a classic structure to hang my hat on.”
“I have found in the past that I get the most freedom of expression as an actress when there is really clear structure,” added Gyllenhaal.
YANNIS DRAKOULIDIS/NETFLIX
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She continued, “I’m not sure I’ll do that next time. I was on the jury at Cannes this year, probably two or three weeks after I finished my final mix. Looking at some really, really interesting films, I realized, oh — you can do whatever you want if you’re following something truthful, and I don’t think I knew that.”
The Lost Daughterstars Colman as Leda, a literature professor and mother of two grown daughters who goes on an extended vacation in Greece. While there, she encounters a vacationing family and a young mother who reminds her of her own dark experiences with parenthood. The cast includes Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal and Gyllenhaal’s real-life husband Peter Sarsgaard.
Colman, 47, toldBBC Newsof the film, “I don’t recall seeing a woman like Leda depicted on screen before. It’s searingly honest, the depiction of not necessarily being a great mum.”
“The film is about a lot of things, but one of the things that this film is about is how complicated it is to be a mother, so I don’t think I could have really have explored those things and all of the complications without knowing that my family was taken care of,” Gyllenhaal recently told PEOPLE ofSarsgaard “picking up the slack” at homeso she could focus on filmmaking.
The Lost Daughteris streaming on Netflix starting Friday.
source: people.com
