Maggie Gyllenhaal has a strong will: As an actor, she often winds up trading notes with directors, suggesting wardrobe choices, and analyzing films and their messages more than many of her peers. A cursory glance at The Dark Knight makes it seem like the Hollywood summer blockbuster has bent to that will: The new film, the second since director Christopher Nolan rebooted the Batman franchise with Christian Bale as the lead, gets darker and bleaker as it proceeds, and Gyllenhaal plays a character for whom tragedy seems just around the corner. It falls right in line with Gyllenhaal's repertoire of dark films with tormented characters, but with a few key differences: This one cost $150 million and is this summer's all-consuming juggernaut.
That last part is new to Gyllenhaal, who took over the role of Rachel Dawes from Katie Holmes, who debuted it in 2005's Batman Begins. Since the world noticed Gyllenhaal after 2002's Secretary, she's typically favored small-scale indies and supporting roles in bigger films. But nothing is bigger than The Dark Knight, a film whose overwhelming hype only grew more pitched with the unexpected death of co-star Heath Ledger in January of this year. While Ledger leaves a long shadow, Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gyllenhaal turn the film into an ensemble drama—albeit one with lots of explosions. Gyllenhaal recently spoke with The A.V. Club about underestimating those explosions, working with Ledger, and her career so far.
The A.V. Club: You've said you did everything you could to decline this part, and you've expressed disinterest in action films in the past. Why the change of heart?
Maggie Gyllenhaal: I think it's sort of clear if you've seen it. It's not a stupid summer movie, you know what I mean? It's not like a big compromise. I guess really what I meant by that, that I did everything I could to say no… [Laughs.] I had a 3-month-old. I really was not in the frame of mind of wanting to work. I wasn't reading scripts at all; I was just on another planet, the planet of being a mom. When the script came to me, I sort of thought, "I'm not even in the world of movies right now, let alone the hugest movie ever." Also, to be totally honest, before I'd read it and thought "Oh God do I want to do this?", it was the first time in my life the paparazzi—to whom nothing is sacred—had been so horrible and awful and invasive to us, that I just thought, "Why would I want to go do this huge, huge movie that everyone will see, and it will only feed that?" But meeting with Chris, reading the script, and also the cast, just kind of knowing who they were, did make it impossible for me not to do it. If someone asks me if I want to be in a movie Gary Oldman is in, even if I only get to say one line to him, which is the case here, it's hard to say no. I think he's an unbelievable actor. Also, I did say to Chris, "I really want her to be smart." And he'd say "Okay." "And I really want her to be a great woman, and actually have a point of view about things." "Great, yes, that's what I want too." Every turn, he was like, "Yes, help me. Let's make her better."
AVC: In every role you choose, you say you need something to think about and work through. What did you have to work through for this role?
MG: Well, you know, the process of working on this movie was very tied up with having a baby. My daughter was 7 months old when we started shooting, and 14 months old when we finished. I was really just beginning to step out and think about what it meant to be an actress and what it meant to be a woman, which is in some ways a question you always have to ask yourself if you're going to do a movie like this. What does it mean to be the woman in this movie, in this big Hollywood action movie? And is there a way to do it that's cool, that's awesome? Is there a way to do it that you actually believe that these incredible guys actually like her this much? Is there a way to do it where she actually also has a point of view about the state of the world, the moral state of the universe, like these guys do? I tried to make that true; it's not up to me to say whether it worked. But that definitely was what I tried and wanted to do. And those were all things that I was thinking about.
AVC: Aaron Eckhart joked that if the script called for you to be in peril, you had a problem with it. Are there any types of roles you wouldn't take outright?
MG: No, I mean, he was just kidding. The truth is, what I didn't want to be was just the sort of empty lady who gets thrown around by different guys and doesn't have anything to do but look scared. I just wanted her to be a real person. There are times when she's scared and she's in peril for sure, but it's true, I would always sort of try to figure out another way to play it. [Laughs.] But it's important that that happens to her—and that happens to us women. We do get scared sometimes and feel vulnerable and all sorts of things. I just wanted her to be a real person. I don't want to play the happy hooker, you know? [Laughs.] There are some things I don't want to do. Then again, if you're going to play a hooker in a movie, the movie has to have the perspective, of course, that it isn't such a great thing. Probably the only way to really play a hooker well is to believe you're doing something that's good. But at the same time, the movie can't have that point of view, so… [Laughs.] There are lots of things I wouldn't do.
AVC: Like what, besides the happy hooker?
MG: Well, I don't think there are that many I could say unequivocally "I would not play that," but there's lots of parts I read and I think, "I don't really want to do that. I don't really think that's how women act."
AVC: Is the lack of believability the common denominator?
MG: Well, sometimes I'll read things and think, "That's not how humans behave," or "I don't understand how to do that and make it seem like I'm not some kind of strange alien or on a sitcom." I don't get it, and when I feel that way, I have to listen to my instinct. There was one time recently, of course I can't say what the movie is, but I had a lot of problems with it. I thought it wasn't the way humans really behave. I had a meeting with the director, who then decided he didn't want me anymore. [Laughs.] And after that, I thought, "You know what? I think I didn't give that a fair chance. I think maybe I was too quick to judge that." But often my initial instinct does lead me in a direction that I can trust.
AVC: When does being opinionated and having ideas become being high-maintenance?
MG: [Laughs.] Yeah, that's interesting. Well, I think it depends on what you're defending. If you're defending something artistic and something that you believe is really important to the work that you're doing, and you're able to listen and you're able to be wrong, then I don't really see how that can be a problem. But if you're defending your right to have an assistant and a big trailer, then of course that's a problem right away. Some people would probably disagree with that and say you need what you need to work, but I need very little to work, because I learned how to make movies on tiny movies. It's all kind of easy for me.
AVC: Was there culture shock in being on this giant blockbuster set?
MG: It didn't feel really like culture shock, partially because most of the work I did were just little scenes. A couple of things I did on the huge Batman sets, and that did feel like, "Oh my God, wow." I'd never seen anything like it before, the sets they'd built for the previous Batman films, in these huge hangars. That stuff felt astonishing.
AVC: What scenes were those?
MG: The stuff where we fall through the air, when we land, some of the stunt stuff before that. But mostly we did shoot on location, little scenes between me and one to two other people. We shot very quickly, because Chris had worked with Wally Pfister, his DP [director of photography], so many times, they have such a shorthand. It wasn't that thing you hear about where you shoot half a scene in one day, and the rest of the time, everybody sits around. It was really hard work and felt very much like making a smaller movie.
AVC: You performed the stunt where you slide from the building. What was involved with that?
MG: It looks like it would have taken a lot more bravery than it actually did. [Laughs.] I thought, "Oh, no problem. I'm so excited that I'm going to do a stunt at some point!" It was actually the very last thing I shot in the movie. I thought, "Cool, let's see what it's like." Then we got closer and closer to it, and I got really scared that day. I was in this really tight harness, and I just got scared. I was shaky. I'm pretty athletic, I'm pretty strong, I don't know why I got so scared—not that much was being asked of me physically, so it must have been just in my mind. I did it once, and it was so fun, and that's one thing working on a big, huge movie—well, on this big, huge movie, on a movie this huge—is that they just have access to whoever they want. So the crew is unbelievable, and they can pay them. They want this person, they pay them what they ask, and they can get them. So the people who were doing the stunts with me were obviously really good at their job. I looked at this sweet guy who was holding my hand, because he had to hold onto me before I fell, and I thought, "This guy, I have to trust him. He knows what he's doing." This is not a movie with a budget of $1.5 million, and they're just sort of cobbling it together as best they can, which is a situation I've certainly been in.
AVC: This was seven months after you'd had your child. Did you have to do much physical prep work for it?
MG: Mostly I didn't think at all about my body until after I stopped nursing. When I was nursing, my body was my daughter's, I didn't even think about it. Then I finished nursing, and I was kind of like "Oh, huh, wow, my body's so different." [Laughs.] That whole process, though, happened during the filming of this movie, which is kind of intense. The woman who was the wardrobe designer on the movie was so awesome with me. I watched the movie, I can't really tell, but my body changed so much during the course of filming this movie. She was just pulling up bra straps and tucking this in the whole time, changing everything to make it fit me. She really took care of me on the movie, and she let me play a big part in designing part of it. I'm always really into what my characters wear, and it was really a lot of fun in this case.
AVC: Is there anything in the final cut or missing from it that surprised you?
MG: Everything that I did in the movie was in the final cut. And the rest of the movie, to be honest… [Laughs.] I read the script, [but] I'm so unused to reading explosions and the long descriptions of fight scenes. I sort of thought, "Right, right, they fight, something explodes, then okay, they both talk again." [Laughs.] So all the major plot points were there; I'm not sure how much the explosions and fights shifted and changed.
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