Maggie may go far

I can think of several perfectly red-blooded women who have been known to come over a bit queer when they see the words ‘Maggie Gyllenhaal’.

There’s just something about the 28-year-old that casts a sort of gay spell. I suspect it’s one of those weirdly intense identification things, where admiration consolidates into some kind of swooning teenage crush. The main internet shrines erected in her honour are, unusually for a dishy young starlet, primarily maintained by women. Many of them became hooked around the time of Secretary. Fair enough. I can think of no other contemporary actress that could have invested that film with the quality of a feminist fable. Many others are simply mesmerised by how cool she is.
Her career has, since the outset, been a scientific study of hip. First emerging in smaller indie roles, she took early strategic cameos in Donnie Darko, Cecil B. DeMented, Adaptation and Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind. The centre of a glittering young celebrity nexus including fiancé Peter Sarsgaard, best friend Kirsten Dunst and brother Jake, she was quickly dubbed the ‘It’ girl by the American media.
Though she harks back to an era in cinema when women had, you know, personalities, she is unlikely to be confused with the similarly honoured Clara Bow. For one thing, you won’t hear Maggie’s name attached to sordid tales involving entire football teams. No. A whip-smart Columbia graduate and descendant of Swedish royalty, she possesses an unusually commanding air, has little time for wife/girlfriend roles and speaks frequently about the need for female empowerment in the film industry.
She and the equally charming Sarsgaard are expecting their first child in October, but happily, she has plenty of performances in the bag so we shouldn’t be too deprived during the post-partum period. Over the coming months she will grace our screens in Olivier Assayas’ Paris, Je T’aime, Marc Forster’s Stranger Than Fiction and the delightfully Spielbergian Monster House, the best of this summer’s crop of computer-animated adventures (unsurprisingly, the E.T. director is attached as producer).
Of course, nothing attracts the paparazzi quite like the prospect of snapping a prepossessing young woman carrying extra pregnancy poundage about to put a forkful of food in her mouth. With Maggie and Peter being dubbed the new ‘Brangelina’ by celebrity mom-watch outlets, I’m not too surprised when her ‘people’ enter the suite at the Regency Hotel in New York with the dictate – ‘No Baby Questions’.
When she walks in a few minutes later, she politely but firmly apologises. “I’m sorry,” she says, with a little bow. “It’s just I feel that my first job as a mother is to protect my baby from the press. I mean, I understand it. I guess pregnancy, no matter who you are, is a compelling thing. But what can you do?” Sounds reasonable to me.
Still visibly smarting from the controversy surrounding Oliver Stone’s World Trade Centre, a storm engineered even before the film has been released, she has good cause to be wary of journalists.
A native New Yorker, the events of 9/11, she claims, prompted her to think hard on geopolitics.
“It woke me up to what was happening in the world,” she says. “I was not completely unaware of the political fault-lines, but like many people, it snapped something inside me. I needed to understand.”
And that’s when the trouble started.
In an interview last year, the actress suggested that the United States “is responsible in some way” for the attacks and needed to take stock. Upon publication of these comments, her website was promptly bombarded by abusive messages and she found herself in the middle of a media firestorm.
She responded with a carefully worded statement, claiming that September 11 was “an occasion to be brave enough to ask some serious questions about America’s role in the world. Because it is always useful as individuals or nations to ask how we may have knowingly or unknowingly contributed to this conflict. Not to have the courage to ask these questions of ourselves is to betray the victims of 9/11.” She then expressed her grief for “everyone who suffered and everyone who died in the catastrophe.”
Even so, eyebrows were raised when Oliver Stone cast Maggie in World Trade Centre. Inspired by the true story of Port Authority Police officers John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), the film follows the two men into the North Tower of the former New York City landmark. McLoughlin and Jimeno were among the first on the scene. With a small group of others, they rushed into the burning tower to help those inside, only to become trapped after the tower collapsed.
Playing Will Jimeno’s wife Alison, Maggie effortlessly conveys the confusion and strain of that day. She did, however, offer to withdraw from the project completely if Alison did not approve.
“I was pretty set up to do the movie,” she recalls. “But not contractually set. Then I heard they were curious about what I had said.
So I thought a lot about it and I thought I would be completely honest with them and tell them what I meant. I felt that if they did not want me to play Alison then I would not. I could not imagine doing that. It was really important at that time.”
What was said, I wonder, during that first encounter?
“Well, it was such an intense meeting,” she says in her characteristically high-pitched rasp. “You know, to meet under those circumstances is difficult. The whole thing was very painful and hard for me. But it really opened us both up and allowed a very honest relationship. There was nothing to get through. It was right there from the beginning. We were friends and that was that.”
She’s not lying. Later that day I spy Maggie and Alison giggling and strolling down a corridor together.
Looks like one more girl for the girl’s girl fan-club.