Maggie Gyllenhaal

Margalit Ruth "Maggie" Gyllenhaal (born November 16, 1977) is an American actress and filmmaker.

Part of the Gyllenhaal family, she is the daughter of filmmakers Stephen Gyllenhaal and Naomi Achs, and the older sister of actor Jake Gyllenhaal.

Her parents married in 1977, and filed for divorce in October 2008.

Gyllenhaal grew up in Los Angeles and studied at the Harvard–Westlake prep school.

She spent four months as a student at The Mountain School, a semester school for high school juniors in Vermont.

At the age of 15, she made a brief appearance in her father's film Waterland (1992).

Soon, she had supporting roles in A Dangerous Woman (1993) and Homegrown (1998), which were directed by her father, which also featured her brother Jake.

With their mother, she and Jake appeared in two episodes of Molto Mario, an Italian cooking show on the Food Network.

In 1995, she graduated from Harvard–Westlake and moved to New York to attend Columbia University, where she studied literature and Eastern religions.

She also studied acting for a summer term at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, England.

Gyllenhaal has also appeared in five stage productions since 2000, including making her Broadway debut in a revival of The Real Thing. She has starred in several television series, including the BBC political-thriller miniseries The Honourable Woman.

For her performance, she won a Golden Globe award for Best Actress, and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.

After graduating from college, she had supporting roles in films including Cecil B. Demented (2000) and Riding in Cars with Boys (2001).

Production started in May 2000 and ended in mid-July of that year.

Gyllenhaal has performed in several other plays, including The Tempest, Antony and Cleopatra, The Butterfly Project, and No Exit.

She began her career as a teenager with small roles in several of her father's films, and appeared with her brother in the cult favorite Donnie Darko (2001).

Gyllenhaal later achieved recognition in her own right playing her real brother's on-screen sister in the indie cult favorite Donnie Darko (2001).

She made her theatrical debut in the Berkeley Repertory Theatre production of Patrick Marber's Closer, for which she received favorable reviews.

She then appeared in Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (both 2002), and Mona Lisa Smile (2003).

Gyllenhaal received critical acclaim for her leading performances in the erotic romantic comedy drama Secretary (2002) and the drama Sherrybaby (2006), each of which earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination.

Gyllenhaal's breakout role was in the black comedy, Secretary (2002), a film about two people who embark on a mutually fulfilling BDSM lifestyle.

The New York Times critic Stephen Holden noted: "The role of Lee, which Maggie Gyllenhaal imbues with a restrained comic delicacy and sweetness, should make her a star."

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "Maggie Gyllenhaal, as the self-destructive secretary, is enigmatic and, at moments, sympathetic."

After several commercially successful films in 2006, including World Trade Center, she received wider recognition for playing Rachel Dawes in the superhero film The Dark Knight (2008).

For her performance as a single mother in Crazy Heart (2009), she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Gyllenhaal has been married to actor Peter Sarsgaard since 2009 and they have two children together.

Gyllenhaal was born in Manhattan, the daughter of Naomi Achs and Stephen Gyllenhaal.

She subsequently starred in the comedies and dramas Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010), Hysteria (2011), and Won't Back Down (2012).

Her other roles include a Secret Service agent in the action-thriller White House Down (2013), a musician in Frank (2014), and the title role in the drama The Kindergarten Teacher (2018).

In 2021, Gyllenhaal made her writing and directing debut with the psychological drama The Lost Daughter, for which she won the Venice International Film Festival's Best Screenplay Award and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The first name on Maggie's birth certificate is "Margalit", which she did not discover until 2013, when adopting her husband's surname.

Margalit (מרגלית) is a Hebrew word meaning "pearl"; some news stories have spelled it "Margolit".

She has a younger brother, actor Jake Gyllenhaal, and a half-brother, Luke, from their father's second marriage.

Her father is a film director and poet, and her mother is a screenwriter and director.

Her father, a member of the noble Gyllenhaal family, is of Swedish and English ancestry, and was raised in the Swedenborgian religion.

Her last native Swedish ancestor was her great-great-grandfather Anders Leonard Gyllenhaal, a descendant of Leonard Gyllenhaal, a leading Swedenborgian who supported the printing and spreading of Swedenborg's writings.

Her mother was born in New York City (growing up in Brooklyn), and is Jewish, from Ashkenazi Jewish families that emigrated from Russia and Poland.

Her mother's first husband was Eric Foner, a noted historian and history professor at Columbia University.

Gyllenhaal has stated that she "grew up mostly Jewish, culturally", and she identifies as Jewish, though she did not attend Hebrew school.

She also produced and starred in the HBO period drama series The Deuce (2017–19).