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In the twisting, turning plot of Criminal, con artist Richard Gaddis (John C. Reilly) partners with the seemingly naive Rodrigo (Diego Luna) to cash in on a counterfeiting scheme. While in pursuit of an impressive payoff, Richard must deal with his estranged sister Valerie (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and stay on top of a game in which no one can be trusted.
Set in Los Angeles with a story that takes place in a single day, Criminal is helmed by first-time director Gregory Jacobs and produced by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney. The screenplay is by Jacobs and Soderbergh, and based loosely on the Argentinean film Nine Queens.
In this interview, we joined the rest of the media to field questions to actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. Maggie has appeared in Mona Lisa Smile with Julia Roberts, Adaptation with Nicolas Cage, and the cult hit Donnie Darko, which starred her brother, Jake Gyllenhaal. But her most daring and notorious role to date came with Secretary, an offbeat story about a sadomasochistic secretary who gets into a relationship with her boss.
MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL
Contributed by Michael J. Lee, Executive Editor
for Radio Free Entertainment
August 30, 2004
Media: How are you?
Maggie: Good. Hi!
When you shot Criminal's earlier scenes, did you mentally focus on what your character Valerie was eventually going to do later in the story?
I think I play each scene with the information that I have up until that point.
What attracted you to this character?
I guess what interested me about her was that she seems to be this sort of classic girl in the con movie--femme fatale, red lipstick thing, which is appealing to me. There's something attractive about that to me. But I think it's something that she's performing with an intention, and I don't think that she's necessarily performing it very well. And I liked that idea, someone who is trying to perform herself as something and not always succeeding. And I definitely felt that when I was playing it, I felt like I didn't know where to put my hands, and there were times when I felt like I was totally pulling it off, and times when I felt like, "I don't know what I'm doing, this is not me." And I think that's what Valerie is going through.
Are you a fan of con movies?
Yeah. I didn't think of it like a genre movie, although that is what it is. It's a very classic con movie. I don't think it's doing anything particularly shocking or new. It's not like it's a new read on it, really. But what is so interesting about this one is that everybody is conning everybody else, and my favorite thing about the movie is that when you watch it, you have to invest yourself. There's nobody saying, "This is the person you can trust, this is the person you can't trust." The movie does not do that. It says, "Trust this person for a while. Oh, look at cute little sweet Diego, he's definitely not lying." And then it seems like he is lying. And then all the things that you valued up until then when he was your protagonist, do you have to throw them all away? Can you throw some of them away? Wait, where are we? And who can I trust? You have to invest in somebody, and chances are you're probably going to invest in somebody that's going to deceive you, because everyone's deceiving.
And how was it working with Diego?
He is great. I love Diego, I have nothing but good things to say about him. He was adorable. Very generous and lovely.
Have you been conned yourself?
Yeah, I've been conned. I've been conned a couple of times, although I think now I'm a little more savvy.
How exactly were you conned?
Well, this is a baby con, it's a teeny little con. Once I was in London alone, I was 18, I was having lunch at a cafe by myself outside. And I had asked for the bill, and I took my wallet out and put it on the table waiting for the bill to come. This guy came over to me and said, "I don't think you're going to be able to pay for your meal." And I said, "What?" And he grabbed my wallet and ran down the street. It's not exactly a con, it's just got a little something in it. And then once when I was traveling alone in Spain, I met this couple that conned me into buying them this expensive dinner. "I'm being conned, and I can't get out of it." It was so strange.
So the moral of the story is to never be traveling alone in Europe?
[laughs] No, not true, there were good things that happened, too.
What was your reaction to those incidents?
I was sort of fascinated both times, actually. I was a little bit thrilled both times, to be honest.
Thrilled?
Yeah, kind of. I remember talking to this English bobby cop guy on the phone and saying my wallet was stolen. I told him the story, and he sort of started laughing, and he asked me, "Well, what does your wallet look like?" I said, "Well, it had a brand of the Virgin Mary branded into the front of it." He was like laughing and said, "Well, you know, I'll get back to you if we find it."
What was it like developing the sort of brother/sister relationship between John C. Reilly and yourself?
I think he and I are sort of similar actors in the sense that I'm not a very literal actor. I didn't feel like he had to feel like my brother. I felt like he had to feel like something, and I was going to let whatever he felt like be okay. And so we just kind of interacted with each other a little bit. We stoked the fire of antagonism a little, and we both let that be okay.
Unlike many young actresses who postpone college, you chose to go through the whole experience. How has that helped you?
I feel so, so, so empowered by having finished college. Because what I got out of it was I learned how to articulate myself. I learned how to say what I mean, and it basically gave me confidence, really more than anything. And also the ability to analyze the text, which is not so important in a movie like this, but very important in doing a Tony Kushner play. I don't think I could have done that play if I didn't go to college.
Is that because you majored in English literature?
Yeah, but it doesn't matter really what your major is. You don't have to have that be your major. That just interested me, so I studied that. It was really more sitting in a seminar and saying something and having everyone understand it...
[loud beeping sound goes off]
Is that anything important?
No.
...I think the confidence that it gave me is the most important thing. And I think it's really worth something. A big part of being an actress, specifically, is feeling entitled to your artistic opinion, feeling that it means something, and being able to stand by it. I think now things are changing, but I do think maybe ten years ago it was really difficult for a young actress to walk onto a set and disagree with the director and have that be okay, and have a conversation about it, and everyone would be cool with it. Unless you're working with like Robert Altman. All the greatest directors want to collaborate with their actors as far as I can see. I think it's the people who are less good that don't want to. But having an education and being able to articulate what it is you want and why is invaluable.
You also studied religion in college?
I took two Tibetan Buddhism classes with Robert Thurman, who's a great teacher at Columbia. But I didn't major in it or anything.
Now that you and your brother Jake or both working so much, do you get much time to spend together?
Yeah, we try and find time to spend together. We just spent a week together.
Around here?
No, on vacation.
Has it been a challenge to find roles that are as interesting as your character in Secretary?
Well, I just did three movies where I played three really interesting women like right back to back. I feel like there's no shortage of interesting women's roles, but I think that's probably inaccurate. But I found them, and I did all of them just now.
Can you tell us a little about them?
Yeah. The first one I shot was this movie called The Great New Wonderful, which was a small movie in New York, and I played a woman who is a cake decorator who decorates cakes that cost fifteen grand, and is really like an entrepreneur stuck in the New York world. She's a crack-up and she's a great woman and I loved her. And then I did a movie called Happy Endings. Don Roos directed that, he directed The Opposite of Sex. I play a woman who's sleeping on her cousin's couch and sort of can't get it together, but she had this incredible kind of wisdom. She had this love triangle with this gay kid and his dad, and she's so wise about it--wiser than I would be in my life about it. She's amazing, that woman. I love her. And then I did this movie, which is maybe the one that's closest to my heart, that I just finished two weeks ago and I think I'm still recovering from in some ways, called Shall Not Want, which is a movie that I had been attached to. I had found the script, this incredible script, about a woman who just got out of prison who has a five year old, and I was holding onto it for years, and we were just trying to set it up and get it going. And we did it, and we made it, and we shot it in 25 days. I just feel like she was another incredible woman.
Why do you feel that you're "still recovering from" this film?
Well, it was a movie shot in 25 days like I said--a movie where I'm in every moment of it, and I'm playing somebody who is a recovering drug addict who got out of prison. It takes place in two weeks, the first two weeks I'm out of prison. And it's hard stuff I was dealing with in that movie. I'm still trying to figure out what the right line is between myself and the people I play. Sometimes I go too far one way or too far the other, and I think in this movie, I got totally sucked into this person I was playing. We were shooting like 14 hours a day in Newark, and going home basically just to eat something and sleep. So most of my waking life was spent playing this woman and working constantly. Not like a big movie where you shoot for an hour or two and then they light for a couple of hours. I mean, this was like [snapping fingers] everything, constantly, constantly, constantly working. And it just takes a little while sometimes to recover from something like that. It's tiring.
Do you have any time for a personal life when you're working that hard?
I have to figure it out. I have to really figure out how to do it. I also did a play in that time. A play is much easier to maintain your personal life with, because if you're rehearsing, you're working from 11 to 6, or 11 to 5, then you get to have your whole morning and you get to have your whole evening. And when you're doing the play, you have all day. And it's a much healthier way of working. On a film, it's hard--12 to 14, 15 hours a day, even when you're not actually acting. A movie like Shall Not Want, I was always actually acting. I was either changing my clothes really quickly and wiping off that lipstick and putting on the other one because really it was yesterday, and we're working [snapping fingers] constantly, constantly, constantly. There's either that, or you have an hour off when you're waiting, but they told you they were going to be ready in ten minutes, so even though an hour's gone by, you've been ready for the past fifty minutes to go and work at any moment. So it's a really active kind of energy and it's really tiring. For me, I think I'm learning how to have a life and work on stuff like that. And then the real test will be having a family. You want to have a family, you really have to come home, you have to eat dinner with your kids, and you have to be there.
Are you hoping to do that in the near future?
No, no, not yet. But at some point, I am planning to do that.
Do you have someone who helps you pick scripts, or someone who just offers you feedback personally and professionally?
My boyfriend can be that for me, who's an actor also. I have an acting teacher who is very helpful to me, and she can be that, too. I talk to my friends about it, and my agents and managers are really smart and interested in not me becoming a commodity, but actually being an artist. So I have a lot of people around me who I can talk to about it. And then in the end, I think there's usually just something in me that says, "Oh, I have to do this one" or "Okay, I can find a way and do that one."
Can you picture yourself doing a so-called "popcorn movie"?
Yeah, I can. I would like to do a big movie that many, many people see. But I just know I would be miserable if it didn't have something to it--if I couldn't do what I do in the midst of that, you know what I mean? So I'm looking for something like that.
Do you get offered those kinds of films?
Sometimes. None of that have sparked me yet.
What is your take on your character in Criminal?
I think she was somebody who was really struggling in the face of people who were dishonest and bullying her. And I think she was just trying to survive it. I mean, that was a hard one. And I didn't know it was going to feel like that to play it, but that's how it felt. It's funny, people have been saying to me all day that she seems really strong. I think she's definitely the weakest woman I've played.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
How so?
I just think she's being bullied by somebody and she's just trying to function as well as she can.
But doesn't she get back at the people who have bullied her?
She does, but I don't really think it fixes it.
Are you planning on taking a break from acting any time soon?
I'm doing this cartoon movie. Not cartoon, exactly, it's where you put the light on your face. Motion capture? Just for seven days, quick. It's called Monster House. I play the disenchanted babysitter of these kids who are getting attacked by this house! And then I would like to take a break. But I don't know, there's all these things I want to do. I'm sort of just waiting to see what comes together.
What do you do to pamper and indulge yourself when you do have some down time?
I'm pretty good at indulging myself. I really like to travel. I'm about to go travel for a week. I like to get massaged and go in steam rooms, and I take care of myself.
Do you have a favorite getaway?
No, not yet. I would like to have a home in the country that I could really go to.
In this country?
First in this country, then I'd like to have two, and I'd like to have the other one be in the Mediterranean, I think. But the thing I really do to take of myself is I hang out with my girlfriends. I have a couple of girlfriends who are like healing, you know. And we take care of each other. They know right now that I need to be taken care of, I still haven't slowed down enough yet to let them really take care of me. But I really need to let them.
What advice would you give to young actresses who would like to have a career path like yours?
I would say that you have a right to your opinion about the work you're doing--that you're an artist that is as equally important as the director is. And if you can believe that, then you can work in any circumstance, however difficult. And I also think that you're not going to do good work if you're not choosing something because it inspires you. You're just not. I mean, I don't know how you could. And so that's not going to lead to something good. Maybe every once in a while you have you say, "Okay, I'm going to make this sacrifice to get this thing," but for the most part, I don't think that's a good idea.
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