Peter Sarsgaard

John Peter Sarsgaard (born March 7, 1971) is an American actor.

He studied at the Actors Studio, before rising to prominence playing atypical and sometimes villainous roles in film and television.

John Peter Sarsgaard was born at Scott Air Force Base in St. Clair County, Illinois, on March 7, 1971, the son of Judy Lea (née Reinhardt) and John Dale Sarsgaard.

His father was an Air Force engineer and later worked for Monsanto and IBM.

His surname originates in Denmark, where his paternal great-great-grandparents were born; it is pronounced in Danish.

Sarsgaard was raised a Catholic and served as an altar boy.

His family moved more than 12 times during his childhood, following his father's job.

At the age of 7, Sarsgaard originally wanted to become a soccer player and took up ballet to help improve his coordination.

After suffering several concussions while playing soccer, he gave up the sport and became interested in writing and theater.

He attended Fairfield College Preparatory School, a private Jesuit boys' school in Connecticut, where he became interested in film.

Following his graduation from Fairfield Prep in 1989, he attended Bard College in New York for two years before transferring to Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) in 1991, where he co-founded an improvisational comedy troupe "Mama's Pot Roast".

While at WUSTL, Sarsgaard began performing in plays in an offshoot of New York's Actors Studio; His first role was as the servant Laurent in Molière's Tartuffe.

In 1993, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in history and moved to New York.

The film is based on the real-life story of Brandon Teena, who was raped and murdered in 1993 by Lotter and Tom Nissen after they found out that he was a trans man.

Boys Don't Cry received overwhelmingly positive acclaim from critics, and his performance was critically well received.

According to The Boston Globe, "Peter Sarsgaard ... makes the killer's terrible trajectory not only believable, but grounded in the most mundane clodhopper behavior. He isn't a drooling monster, he's a guy you wouldn't look twice at a bar or a convenience store."

A contributor from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote "It's a marvelous performance supported ably by ... Sarsgaard as the unpredictable, sociopathic Lotter."

He made his film debut with Dead Man Walking (1995).

Sarsgaard branched out with guest roles in television productions filmed in New York City, with Law & Order in 1995, and New York Undercover (1997) as well as an appearance in the 1997 HBO special Subway Stories.

He appeared in his first film role in Dead Man Walking (1995), where he was cast as a murdered teenager, killed by Sean Penn's character.

In 1995, Sarsgaard made his theatrical debut in the Off-Broadway production of Horton Foote's Laura Dennis, which was directed by James Houghton.

Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote: "Mr. Sarsgaard ... emerges as an actor to watch with a performance of breathtaking emotional conviction."

The following year he starred in Kingdom of Earth opposite Cynthia Nixon and directed by John Cameron Mitchell.

His performance in the play received favorable reviews amongst critics.

His next film roles were in a series of independent features: Another Day in Paradise (1997), part of an ensemble cast that included James Woods, Melanie Griffith, Vincent Kartheiser, and Natasha Gregson Wagner, and In Desert Blue (1998), where he had a supporting role in the film.

He gained recognition for his role in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), Boys Don't Cry (1999), and The Center of the World (2001).

He received a substantial role in the 1998 film The Man in the Iron Mask, where he played Raoul, the ill-fated son of John Malkovich's dueling Musketeer, Athos.

The film uses characters from Alexandre Dumas' d'Artagnan Romances, and is very loosely adapted from some plot elements of The Vicomte de Bragelonne.

The film received ambivalent reviews, but was a success at the box office, earning $182 million worldwide.

In 1999, Sarsgaard earned critical recognition in Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry, where he was cast as notorious killer John Lotter.

The film was screened at a special presentation at the 2000 Venice Film Festival.

In regards to his character, as how Sarsgaard made him "likeable, sympathetic even" was because he wanted the audience "to understand why they would hang out with me. If my character wasn't necessarily likable, I wanted him to be charismatic enough that you weren't going to have a dull time if you were with him."

In another interview, Sarsgaard said he felt "empowered" by playing Lotter.

For his portrayal of Charles Lane in Shattered Glass (2003), Sarsgaard received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Sarsgaard has acted in films such as Garden State, Kinsey (both 2004), Jarhead (2005), Elegy (2008), An Education (2009), Lovelace, Blue Jasmine (both 2013), Black Mass (2015), Jackie (2016), and The Lost Daughter (2021).

Sarsgaard made his Broadway debut portraying Boris Alexeyevich Trigorin in the revival of Anton Chekov's The Seagull (2008).

He is married to Maggie Gyllenhaal.

He is also known for his performances in the blockbuster films Knight and Day (2010), Green Lantern (2011), The Magnificent Seven (2016), and The Batman (2022).

For his performance in Memory (2023), Sarsgaard won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor.

Sarsgaard is also known for his television roles including in the AMC/Netflix crime series The Killing (2013) and the Hulu limited series The Looming Tower (2018) and Dopesick (2021), the latter of which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.