Maggie Gyllenhaal likes sex
In Hysteria, actress once again explores screen sex fearlessly
Maggie Gyllenhaal likes sex — good sex, real sex — and she’s at it again.
Even though the actress happened to be nine months pregnant as she addressed the issue, she was actually talking about screen sex and sexuality, something she has explored fearlessly throughout her career, from her breakthrough in Secretary (2002) through Criminal (2004), Happy Endings (2005), Sherrybaby (2006) and her latest film, Hysteria.
The new film, which opened Friday, recounts the invention — in Victorian England, of all times and places — of the electromechanical vibrator. Gyllenhaal plays Charlotte Dalrymple, a spirited social reformer not on the best of terms with her father, Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), who makes his living helping rich female patients overcome their so-called hysteria, which he does by reaching into their wombs and relieving their tensions. Business starts to boom to the degree that Dalrymple needs an associate, so he hires Dr. Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy), a progressive-thinking but impoverished young physician, to join him.
There is an immediate attraction between Granville and Charlotte, but Granville seems destined to wed Dalrymple’s more proper daughter, Emily (Felicity Jones). Meanwhile the young doctor, after treating one too many patients, develops hand cramps, which leads to his dismissal and the end of his relationship with Emily. It’s not long, however, before he and Charlotte meet again, and before he and his eccentric tinkerer friend, John Smythe (Rupert Everett), invent the electric vibrating massager.
“Isn’t everybody attracted to and interested in sex and sexuality?” Gyllenhaal says during a conversation at the Sony offices in Manhattan. “I think most people are. Charlotte doesn’t have much sex in this movie. She didn’t actually have anything to do with the vibrator at all. I do think she’s a sexy woman, but she’s not particularly overt about it.
“I think it’s very much also a kind of subtle feminism, to be able to express it from a woman’s point of view, what real sex is like,” Gyllenhaal adds. “The actresses I see who do that, where it isn’t like you’re wearing a black demicup Victoria’s Secret bra and it’s lit perfectly and you’re arching your back, but it’s actually what it’s like … I feel like, ‘Oh, yeah, you’re a sister.’ I really appreciate that.”
Gyllenhaal admits that she knew nothing about the invention of the vibrator, until the script came her way. It was sent to her by Tracey Becker, who had produced Crazy Heart (2009), which earned Gyllenhaal an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress.
Only a few weeks after this interview, Gyllenhaal gave birth to her second daughter with husband Peter Sarsgaard. Gloria Ray arrived on April 19. The couple’s other child, Ramona, is now five. The demands of motherhood may make her pickier about the movies she makes, the actress says, but being a mom won’t affect her choice of roles.
“I don’t think, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do Sherrybaby now because I have kids and it wouldn’t be appropriate.’ I do not think that way. But I do think it’s not worth it to take my family to Romania to do something that’s OK. It’s just not. Maybe if I had no kids I’d go, ‘OK, I can do something with this.’ ”