Maggie Gyllenhaal is sharing some insight into her family and new connection with her brother, Jake Gyllenhaal, just before the pair’s new film, The Bride! debuts in theaters.
Separation and Envy
Maggie Gyllenhaal appeared on The Interview podcast on February 28th to talk about her new film, Bride!, as a director. Jake appears alongside Maggie’s husband, Peter Sarsgaard, in the film.
While she noted that asking Jake to appear in her film was an emotional experience, they weren’t always so close. Maggie added that she has, “in the past, had to sort of be separate from my family, from my brother.”
Starting so young with acting and breaking out in the same film together, Maggie had to make her own space in the film industry.
“I don’t think I knew that at first, when I was young and Jake was a movie star right away. I don’t think I was in touch with the envy, but it was there.”
Working through that period in her life, family is now super important to Maggie. That’s part of why she asked Jake to be in the film, reaching out to reconnect.
She added in the interview: “Just basically saying, I want to interact, and I know that this is a place where we can do it. I’m not asking him to do something that he can’t do. I’m making an offer, which is a generous thing to do.”
Gotten Closer
Maggie wanted to reconnect some frayed threads, and she did so through her newest film, Bride!
This is the first time she’s directed her sibling, and she admitted to host Lulu Garcia-Navarro that she cried when he agreed to be in the film.
“I wanted until I was absolutely sure that asking him to do this part — it’s a pretty small part, it’s just a cameo, really — I made sure, I really did some work and thinking to make sure it was the right thing to do, to ask him.”
She added, “I remember asking him and tearing up… just alone in this hotel room I was in, because it meant so much to me. It meant so much for me to interact with him.”
When Navarro asked Maggie if she and Jake “[had] been estranged,” that wasn’t the case.
“No, no, we’ve never been estranged, but we’ve never been as close as we are now. We’re finally, maybe in the last five years, more and more and more, even each day, really interacting, which is hard for people to do.”
An Acting Family
Filmmaking and acting don’t come from anywhere strange in the Gyllenhaal family. Father Stephen has worked as a television and film director since the 1980s, while their mother Naomi was nominated for an Oscar in 1989 for penning the film Running on Empty.
Both Maggie and Jake started acting as teenagers in the 90s and broke out in the early 2000s. All four are renowned in the film industry.
Sibling Success
Maggie starred alongside Jake in 2001’s Donnie Darko, but she didn’t get her big break until the 2002 film Secretary. She later starred in 2008’s The Dark Knight.
Jake broke out in Donnie Darko playing the titular character, and is also known for 1999’s October Sky, 2014’s Nightcrawler, and 2005’s Brokeback Mountain.
Both have been nominated for Oscars in the past.