Maggie on Jake - 'I look at him in awe' - and the Joker, a 'sexy type of villain'

As Maggie Gyllenhaal does the junkets for The Dark Knight, she's been talking about some of my favourite men. Despite her usual reticence to talk about her younger brother Jake, which is hardly surprising considering that the focus in such interviews should be on her, the star of the film in question, here she has this to say about that evergreen topic of sibling rivalry:


"I was the one who first wanted to act, but I stayed in school while he made a career happen. I look at him in awe. There is no jealousy or competitiveness. We help each other and say, 'Yeah, I'd go and do that project,' or, 'You were really good in that film.'" And, she insists, little brother is great at raking over their childhood. Maggie said: "As you get older and start to look at things that are 'broken' about your parents - everybody's parents have those things - it's nice to have someone else to ask, 'Am I crazy?' or, 'Was this crazy?' "Jake is very good at figuring that stuff out."'


One can hardly blame Maggie for not wanting to discuss Jake in interviews about her acting career, but one can also understand the thinking behind the fascination of journalists and critics in this charismatic and extremely attractive and beguiling brother and sister. This double edge is clear in an interesting feature in the Independent about UK TV presenter June Sarpong, who discusses her experience of interviewing celebrities: 'The actress Maggie Gyllenhaal was a tougher nut. "I was her last interview of the day on a press junket for Sherrybaby. Maggie is not the most talkative person and she doesn't enjoy things like that. Someone like George Clooney really enjoys the process. Will Smith is like that, and Tom Cruise. They are such big stars for a good reason.'


'"But Maggie is all about acting and the art and doesn't really want to be famous anyway. I also asked her about her brother Jake and she didn't like that at all. So I sat there thinking, 'Oh dear, what am I going to do?' And then, I just sort of stopped the interview and said, 'I totally understand that you don't like this process – I get it. But this film is not something the average British cinema-goer would probably go and see. But it's so good and your performance is so amazing that I want people to go and see it. And I want this interview to be the thing that gets people to go and see it because your film will really make people think.' And she said, 'Yeah, actually. You're right.' Then we laughed and talked about babies because she'd just had one and she perked up."'


Also in this interview, Maggie shows that she too finds that Heath Ledger has turned the Joker into a new and extraordinary, even sexy, type of villain: 'What Heath did is take somebody who seems to be all evil and show glimmers of something kind, sexy, open and hurt in him. That allows people in the audience to have compassion for something that they originally saw as evil. It's incredible to be around - and that's what it was like with him.' But it is still hard for Maggie to talk about Heath himself.


Maggie is on the cover of the August issue of the UK's Tatler and this time she spoke about Peter: '"I hate it when Peter does a love scene... He's very understanding – it doesn't seem to bother him [when I do one]." She'd like to keep it that way. "I'd hate it [if he was doing it]," she says. "I'd put up with it, I'd understand, but I wouldn't like it."' On this, I think we will have to disagree... Although in no hurry, Peter and Maggie are also planning a wedding and it's going to be big: '"We don't want to just go to City Hall. I want the fairy tale ... and I've had many different incarnations of my fantasy wedding dress."


On location and Off topic

Yesterday, I stumbled across filming for the very popular UK drama series Lewis, the successor to Inspector Morse. So, even though this is hugely off topic (although I'm sure Jake's extended stay in England will make him keen to watch - the drama does provide a good guide to Oxford's pubs after all), here are a couple of pictures of actors Kevin Whateley, also seen in The English Patient, as Inspector Lewis and Laurence Fox as Sgt Hathaway (ooh, that could be a link...). The filming took place at Univ College in Oxford's High Street, earlier they were in The King's Arms.




Further pictures of the hood

And talking of playing detective, these extra pictures from Wet Monday reveal that Jake has exactly the same phone as me. However, it is possible that his does not have the same Jake Gyllenhaal wallpaper as mine. Today has been an appallingly wet day across southern England and so, I fear, there will be more hoods. But at least the hair should grow quicker in the rain. Some warm sunshine tomorrow should also speed the process.








Pictures from IHJ, Celebrity Baby Blog, links and WDW.