July / august 2006:

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Profile by Bradford R. Pilcher



Think Maggie Gyllenhaal, and perhaps the best descriptor would be provocative. Take her turn in Mona Lisa Smile as the sex-addled coed who uses her own debauched ways to toss the ordered world of 1950s Wellesley College. In a movie as misguided and mixed as that one, who knew it would be Jake Gyllenhaal's kid sister who stole the show?

Anyone who'd seen her portray an oft-spanked and sometimes nude assistant to James Spader's perverse boss in Secretary, that's who.

Sensing a trend in subject matter? After her star turn in Secretary and Mona Lisa Smile she ended up naked in a Chinese jail for Strip Search. We told you she was provocative, but don’t think she has to take the road through bed sheets to stardom.

This year sees Gyllenhaal in The Great New Wonderful, where she plays the ever-so-frumpy role of a cake maker trying to beat the competition in post-9/11 New York. Then she goes mainstream with Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, as the wife of a NYC firefighter on that fateful day in September. And if you keep your ears open, you’ll hear her as the voice of babysitter Zee in the kid-flick Monster House.

In other words, this anti-diva has acting range. We might chalk it up to her brief stint at the elite Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, but that would be ignoring her incredible genetics. Her father (not Jewish) is the Emmy-nominated director Stephen Gyllenhaal, her mother (Jewish) is the Golden Globe-winning screenwriter Naomi Foner. You may also have noticed her aforementioned brother in a few flicks.

She's even tackled her Jewish roots in such stage performances as It's an Undoing World, or Why Should It Be Easy When It Can Be Hard? Not that we need her to do Jewish stuff per se.

Far be it from us to keep her away from the more provocative roles.


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