Peter Sarsgaard's iron grip and Jake Gyllenhaal's ideal director experience

Last week, Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal were spotted in that old favourite filming haunt of ours, Santa Fe, where Maggie is currently 'lensing' Crazy Heart along with Robert Duvall and Jeff Bridges. It seems Ramona and her parents were enjoying a spot of face-painting at the Santa Fe Children's Museum, although it is not known what design they picked (a ferret perhaps?). Since then, Peter has presumably had to leave New Mexico for London where rehearsals for The Seagull begin today (25 August) before the production moves lock stock and barrel to Broadway in September.


Peter will be sharing the stage with his An Education co-star Carey Mulligan - who also has a role in Brothers (An Education also features, of course, Alfred Molina, who is currently in Morocco with Jake). This new picture of Carey as Jenny from An Education comes from the blog of the film's screenwriter Nick Hornby, who also gives his impression of seeing the unfinished film for the first time alongside an unsuspecting audience who were literally pulled off the street:


'It felt to me as though it went well – people laughed in the right places, and the friend I went with cried in the right places, too. (Other members of the audience may have cried too, of course, but crying tends to be a quieter activity in the cinema. If you can actually hear people bawling like babies, your film is probably too sad for general consumption.) And I enjoyed it, much more than I thought I would, given one’s natural distaste for one’s own work. It looks great, and the performances are fantastic. But four years’ work went by in a flash, or in an hour and forty-five minutes, anyway. Part of me felt as though the audience should experience the same kind of slog as we endured. And though I wouldn’t want people to sit through, say, a four-year long film, it wouldn’t kill them if it lasted twelve hours or so, would it?'


It seems Peter got the job of Trigorin in The Seagull because Carey asked him to name actors he thought suitable, whereupon Seagull director Ian Rickson threw away the list and hired Peter instead. The reason being: 'The virility of Trigorin, and his attachment to nature, his sexuality, his vibrancy, I feel is a really important thing... Young actors who are very masculine and have that soulfulness are very hard to find.' Rickson certainly has one in Peter.


In this article, Peter also describes his response to seeing Heath Ledger as the Joker, a performance that demonstrated so perfectly to Peter that extremely talented and so called 'independent' actors can find a home in blockbusters and franchises (one also must think of Prince of Persia): 'You see Heath Ledger’s performance and you go, well, there’s somebody who shows that it’s possible to be an enormously amazing actor in the middle of a franchise... I see that movie and I see a man who is happy acting—it looks like he’s tap-dancing. The part does not destroy the actor, ever, if they’re good. That had absolutely nothing to do with what happened to him.'


Peter says in his Screen Test video interview for New York Times - and it's such a good self-portrait - that he finds the stage more difficult but more interesting than a movie set. You have to retain an 'iron grip' for the length of the production.


And with all the political talk going on lately, with Obama's announcement of his running mate, this seems like a good point at which to post Peter's video for the 18 in 08 campaign. If this man asked you to vote, how could you say no?



So what of another of Peter's co-stars, Jake Gyllenhaal? Today I revisited Jarhead, which has so many attractions and reasons for watching that it would be impossible to list them all - but one has blue eyes and the most gorgeous smile you can imagine, despite his hair issues. So here is Jake on the set of Jarhead describing the film and paying tribute to its director Sam Mendes. I just hope that Jake is having a similar kind of rewarding experience on the set in Morocco with Mike Newell.



'To have a director who appreciates who you are, who's not making you into something else that you're not, is really awesome; is probably unlike any other experience I'll ever have again.'





Includes pictures from IHJ, WDW and links.