“I try to put something dangerous on screen”
Maggie Gyllenhaal on the mentors and mental strength behind her directorial debut, THE LOST DAUGHTER
THOSE WHO HAVE kept track of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s career over the past few decades will be unsurprised by her scorching, character-led first film as director, The Lost Daughter. The actor, whose stacked back catalogue ranges from cult hits like Secretary to The Dark Knight, not to mention her electrifying turn as sex worker and entrepreneur Candy in HBO’S The Deuce, has translated her experience of playing robust female characters into an emotionally rich tale of unravelling motherhood, which stars Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley and Dakota Johnson.
“The same things that were motivating me as an actress were motivating me as a director,” she tells Empire. “I try to put something really honest on screen, and also probably something that is a little dangerous to talk about.”
Gyllenhaal’s calling as a filmmaker has been embedded in her for years, since first realising that there was always something more that she could bring to the stories she was acting out. “I always felt like I was compromising,” she explains. “I would think, ‘This scene would be so much more interesting if she was drunk, or if I played her as if she was 90 years old.’”
Feeling unheard as a performer (“Very few people like actors with ideas,” she warns) forced Gyllenhaal to deal with her frustrations productively. “Just keep your mouth shut, and take what you need to make the scene,” she would tell herself while essentially learning on the job.
In a bid to take back some of that control, Gyllenhaal pivoted into producing. It was down this new branch of her career that she would find The Lost Daughter, which began life as a novel by Italian author Elena Ferrante. Gyllenhaal discovered the book during her work on 2018’s The Kindergarten Teacher, which she starred in and produced, and approached Ferrante with the intent of purchasing the rights to her story. “She said yes, but that the contract would be void unless I directed it, so it was this vote of confidence to push forward.”
During development, Gyllenhaal called upon some of her most trusted collaborators to help shape the final film. Her mother, a screenwriter, helped her to finesse its structure, while friends Tony Kushner and Emma Thompson fed back on an early cut of the film. “You know who gave me great notes? Pablo Larraín,” she says. “He said: ‘Don’t be coy with this ending. You’ve taken me through this entire film, give me a fucking ending. Don’t be coy, and don’t be cool.’ It was such a good note because he wasn’t telling me to cut seconds here and there; he’s telling me to go for it.”
The result is neither cool nor coy, but instead the dangerous and honest film that she had always set out to make. It may have taken decades to get to this point, but Gyllenhaal is not keeping her mouth shut any longer.
THE LOST DAUGHTER IS IN CINEMAS FROM 17 DECEMBER AND ON NETFLIX FROM 31 DECEMBER