Truly, Deeply, Maggie Gyllenhaal
The planets have aligned. With four movies in theaters this fall and her first baby due next month, Maggie Gyllenhaal is having a moment.
By Meryl Gordon
Photo Credit: Ruven Afanador
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Whenever Maggie Gyllenhaal starts thinking about how to portray a role in a new movie, the first thing she focuses on is the wardrobe. "Clothing, for me, is expressive," she explains. "It's very important to me that I feel connected to what I'm wearing." She likes to play around with how women convey sexiness, using clothing to reveal character, such as sporting a revealing yellow halter top (for a role as an ex-con) or showing a more subtle sensuality (playing a pastry chef) with "gauzy things that looked like they were falling off."
On this sunny summer afternoon, Gyllenhaal is sitting in a Japanese restaurant in New York City's SoHo, looking radiantly rumpled. Life has now imitated art in her wardrobe choices. In Oliver Stone's new movie, World Trade Center, she plays the six-months-pregnant wife of a Port Authority cop trapped in the 9/11 rubble. Shortly after the film wrapped, Gyllenhaal discovered that she herself was pregnant. She has traded a fake big belly for the real thing.
Now on the verge of having her baby, she laughingly confesses that she had no idea what she was in for, physically. "My breasts have grown two-and-a-half cups," she says, sounding shocked, "which has been very hard to get used to." And she's a little bit anxious about dressing for the upcoming press tour. "I used to be able to look at a dress and think, That'll work, but now things won't fit over my breasts, let alone my belly."
Today, Gyllenhaal is dressed for hot weather. Her hair is pinned up; she's in light green pants and a skinny, pink, sleeveless tee layered over a similar white one, emphasizing her new curves. She also sports a sparkling platinum-and-diamond engagement ring.
At age 28, with a baby due and four — yes, four — movies out this fall, life is coming together for Maggie Gyllenhaal. Last year was her kid brother Jake's big moment, as the cultural phenomenon Brokeback Mountain turned him into a major movie star; this is likely to be the year that boosts her into the pantheon of bankable young actresses. "Maggie can play anything," enthuses director Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, and Gyllenhaal's latest, Stranger Than Fiction). "She likes to push herself. And she's adorable; people just love her." Gyllenhaal has been collecting raves for years, from bit parts in quirky movies such as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind to her breakthrough performance as an unhappy woman who finds joy through a sadomasochistic relationship in Secretary. New York Times movie critic Manohla Dargis wrote of Gyllenhaal last summer, "There isn't an American actress in movies today who holds the screen with as much deep-seated soul." Her eclectic new movies showcase her range as an actress. She plays whimsical, sweet-natured characters in two upcoming films: In the twisty and surreal Stranger Than Fiction, she's a tattooed, anarchist pastry chef who becomes the love interest of IRS agent Will Ferrell, while in the romantic comedy Trust the Man, she's a fledgling Manhattan children's-book author with relationship problems.
