Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal: ​‘When we express our­selves as women, it feels different’

An accom­plished actress with almost 30 years of expe­ri­ence to her name, Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal has built an impres­sive body of work by choos­ing to play com­plex, often dis­agree­able char­ac­ters, from Lee Hol­loway in Sec­re­tary to Lisa Spinel­li in The Kinder­garten Teacher. With her adap­ta­tion of Ele­na Ferrante’s nov­el ​‘The Lost Daugh­ter’, she uses her keen eye for the intri­ca­cies of women’s lives behind the cam­era, result­ing in a sul­try, com­plex direc­to­r­i­al debut.

LWLies: As the daugh­ter of two direc­tors, was film­mak­ing some­thing that you were always inter­est­ed in?

Gyl­len­haal: My dad was a direc­tor but my mom was real­ly a writer – it wasn’t until she was in her six­ties that she direct­ed a film. I only men­tion that because I think, yes, look­ing back, I prob­a­bly did always want to direct. So much of my work as an actress when I look back on it hav­ing become a direc­tor, was direc­to­r­i­al, in terms of sto­ry­telling, in terms of why this scene in this way, how to approach it to say what I ulti­mate­ly want­ed the piece to say. If I’m com­plete­ly hon­est, I think I didn’t feel enti­tled to even want to direct until much more recently.

The actors that move into direct­ing often tend to be men. I don’t know if there’s less of a con­sid­er­a­tion, maybe, for them. As a woman there’s this thing in the back of your head where you don’t want to ask for more than you’re giv­en – it’s like every­thing you get is a bonus.

I’ll say a few things about that. One is, so many actress­es recent­ly – Gre­ta Ger­wig, Rebec­ca Hall, me, Halle Berry – have direct­ed their first film. In a way, 100 years ago, if you were a med­ical-mind­ed woman you would think, ​‘I’m gonna become a nurse, not a doc­tor.’ It’s some­thing sim­i­lar like, you’re a sto­ry­teller, you love film, you’re a woman. It’s an eas­i­er path to become an actress, a think­ing actress, an actress with ideas. And there’s def­i­nite­ly a mod­el for that. It’s a more dif­fi­cult path – although there cer­tain­ly have been women on it – to become a direc­tor. Now that there’s a real atten­tion for mak­ing space for women to express them­selves in film, maybe you will see more actress­es going, ​‘You know, I think I’ve always been a direc­tor,’ cause for me I do feel that way.

Can you talk a lit­tle about the female direc­tors who inspired you through­out your career. Is there any­one you looked to when you knew you were mak­ing The Lost Daugh­ter?

I’ve talked quite a lot about Jane Cam­pi­on. When I saw The Piano I was maybe 16. A lot of peo­ple dis­agree with me about this in gen­er­al, but I think that there is such a thing as women’s work, women’s writ­ing, women’s film­mak­ing. I do think when we express our­selves as women it looks dif­fer­ent, and it feels dif­fer­ent to digest it as a woman. My expe­ri­ence of watch­ing The Piano, I relat­ed to it. I don’t know why that image of Hol­ly Hunter’s foot tied to the piano at the bot­tom of the ocean has nev­er left me, but some­how it spoke to some­thing in my expe­ri­ence that I had nev­er spo­ken to before. That’s the same with Fer­rante in terms of writ­ing. Her books are say­ing some­thing true, hon­est, about a fem­i­nine expe­ri­ence in the world that I had nev­er heard expressed before, it just went in so powerfully.

I love Lucre­cia Mar­tel, I’m so inspired by her. I think I real­ly took the con­fi­dence – she’s so not lit­er­al, which is my favourite kind of movie, my favourite kind of script to act as an actress, my favourite kind of film to watch, where you have to use your own mind, your own heart to under­stand emo­tion­al­ly what’s hap­pen­ing. She does that with so much con­fi­dence and grace, I love the way her films look. I also real­ly real­ly love Claire Denis. I was so in love with the end of Beau Tra­vail, one of the most incred­i­ble sequences that I’ve ever seen. I actu­al­ly kind of stole her cred­it sequence. Those are three that I real­ly love and who influ­enced this par­tic­u­lar piece of work.

You were on the jury at Cannes – what was your reac­tion to Titane, hav­ing just made a film about motherhood?

I had nev­er seen a film like that before. I don’t know how much you can say in the mag­a­zine with­out giv­ing away too much of the movie, but to me, going from the incred­i­bly fas­ci­nat­ing but much more con­ven­tion­al dance that she does on the car in the begin­ning, to the one she does on the fire engine at the end, I was like, ​‘Fuck, this is amaz­ing! Look at the spec­trum of what this is offer­ing.’ You could def­i­nite­ly put my film and her film togeth­er in a series about uncon­ven­tion­al mothers!

The Lost Daugh­ter is avail­able on Net­flix from 17 Decem­ber. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.