PETER SARSGAARD: The Hollywood Interview

(Peter Sarsgaard in AN EDUCATION, above.)

by Terry Keefe

(Currently appearing in this month's Venice Magazine.)

Like a seal of approval, it’s always a good sign of a film’s merit to see Peter Sarsgaard in the opening credits, because he chooses his projects well, whether it has been in a leading or supporting role. For a few years now, he has been in a strong enough career position that he could opt only to play leads, even if those were in smaller films, but from his film choices, he has also clearly been more interested in the quality of role, and not necessarily the size of the part, or the paycheck. As Mark, the uniquely resourceful slacker best friend of Zach Braff in Garden State, and as Clyde Martin, the protégé in Kinsey, and in his portrayal of real-life New Republic editor Charles Lane in Shattered Glass, and as rapist John Lotter in Boys Don’t Cry, to name some of the most prominent examples, Sarsgaard has brought star-level quality, preparation, and intensity to smaller roles, and raised those films up a significant notch overall as a result. He has also been slowly taking on leading roles more frequently, such as his work this year in the thriller Orphan. An apt career comparison can be made to that of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who, some ten years ago, also scorched across a number of films such as Boogie Nights and Almost Famous in key supporting roles, building a reputation to the point that when he did step up to the top of the credit roll as the star, it felt like he had been there all along. Sarsgaard is reaching a similar career point now with his new film, An Education, for which he is a likely Oscar nominee in his leading role as David, the sophisticated older man who seduces Carey Mulligan’s 16-year old British school girl Jenny in early 60s London.


An Education was directed by Lone Scherfig, from a script by Nick Hornby, who adapted from a short memoir by journalist Lynn Barber about her first love affair. The story takes place right before the Swinging 60s actually begin, and the thirty-something David arrives almost like the advance guard of the era to come, sweeping both Jenny and her family off her feet, through a combination of charm and deception. It’s a character that required an actor who could bring significant added depth to David, so that we too are seduced by his childlike energy and can’t hate him, even when he deserves it. Sarsgaard creates that complexity for the character in his strongest work to date.

Your character of David in An Education seduces Jenny, but the reverse is also very much true. She seduces him, or at least her youth does. Was that something you gave much thought to?

Peter Sarsgaard: Oh, yeah. If you think about what his own youth must have been like, when he was sixteen, so 1940, presumably? Around there. It was a difficult time to be a child, and so I think he’s trying to find that joy and happiness in his life now.


David grew up during the war. He was also Jewish. Did you create much back story other than that?

I thought about it. But I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, because he doesn’t. But I thought that period…it was all bombing, then the food-rationing, and I looked at a lot of pictures of that time, and the ‘50s, and, you know, London…it was just a place where people were so desperate to have fun. They had these, like, little fairs during that time, which were the only source of escape for people. And I think that David is emblematic of a lot of the feelings that Brits had during that time. And, you know, his being Jewish…I’m an American playing the role, and fundamentally an outsider [in England]…so even though I’m not Jewish, a lot of the feelings of not quite belonging are there. That’s the part of the role that’s probably the most difficult to play. You know, you can’t really play “being Jewish” without being offensive…

There had to have been some concerns about the Jewish aspect of the character, because you could go very easily too far in one direction or the other in terms of your choices.

You could, you could. You could also just play it like it was a lie, which I thought was a possibility.
It’s definitely a possibility with David.

It’s a possibility. I was concerned when they first offered me the role, because I wanted to do it so badly because it was so well written…but I felt that I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t cast a British Jew. Maybe [they didn’t] because it would be too comfortable for him. As an actor, you make everything make sense on your own terms, and you don’t try to pretend something isn’t there that is, i.e. I’m an American Catholic. You just incorporate all those things. And it worked quite well for me. So, if you know, even at the start of the film, you’re watching the movie, and you think, “Oh, Peter is playing a Jewish Brit, and he’s neither,” then you start watching the movie, and maybe that goes away, and you forget that I’m doing an accent. But that little thread of “He’s a fraud” works quite well for me in this movie.

There’s the scene where I’m talking about going to see C.S. Lewis, and I’m with Jenny’s family, and I say that I’ve gone to Oxford, and Jenny comes and sits down, and we’re sort of in it together at that moment, she and I, in tricking her family. And I had a complete meltdown that day, where I couldn’t - it started out I couldn’t remember my lines, even though I knew my lines. And then I felt kind of cold-sweaty…it was anxiety. And I don’t know if that even wound up registering in the scene, because I just took a minute and got it together, and I played it. But I am covering anxiety in that scene…that is genuine actor anxiety.

It probably helps your performance in that scene.

And it probably helps, and it’s probably something that David feels so much in his life, so much of the time, because anyone who’s living in deception like that…it’s not a very comfortable place to be. I think a lot of people think that if a man is dating three different women, and none of them know, they think “That lucky guy!” [laughs] No--



(Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard, above, in AN EDUCATION.)


In his own mind, does David think of himself as a good guy?

I think he thinks of himself as a person with good qualities and bad qualities. I certainly don’t think he has the venom for himself that some people have expressed toward me after having seen the movie.

Have people expressed venom towards him?

It’s interesting. A lot of men.

Really? Okay. Because your character is getting away with something they’d like to try, maybe?

Exactly! [laughs] Because it looks nice until you do it. And also because maybe they’ve done it. And they have the self-loathing of someone who’s done it. But for a lot of women, they’re like, “Oh, I knew a guy like that.” [laughs]

You were cast before Carey was. Did you read against Carey, as well as other girls, to help find the right Jenny?

There had been a different incarnation of the movie. It had a different director who wanted to go do a bigger film first, and then come back to this one, but, you know, if you snooze you lose on a movie like this. And we said, “Thank you very much,” and it ended up being a blessing. I’m sure that director would have done a fine job, but when Lone came on, I didn’t actually read with any of the girls with her. Carey had read in the previous incarnation, and I didn’t really enjoy doing that. I sort of thought, I mean…I don’t want to have any say, because I have to put my faith in other people. Otherwise, every movie I do will be the same. And that’s the way that I’ve had difference in the movies that I’ve done, not just in terms of character, but in terms of tone, in terms of everything overall, is because I put my fifty cents in, but, I really try to adopt other people’s viewpoints and ideas, down to wardrobe and everything.

That can be scary though, because you’re putting yourself so much in the hands of others.

I mean, I’ve had it before on a movie, where I said, like, “Honestly, none of this looks right to me.” And that’s a big drag, because they’ve brought out all that stuff.

So there is a point where you’d cut things off if it feels completely wrong.

Yeah, or I’ll just go…first I’ll say, like, “Well, tell me why you think this is right.” You know? And sometimes it’ll be just a matter of this reason or that. “But I’ve wanted to wear this other thing.” Sometimes I think the combination of the two [ideas] might be good. And that’s the way I’ve worked well with anyone, and Lone is certainly like that. You know, Lone…has just a very easy way of directing. She doesn’t give you a lot of detailed notes. You know, there’s no “Make sure you hit this, make sure you hit that.” I mean, occasionally there will be, and I usually know that it’s for story reasons, because she wants it to be clear, and I’m all for that, because I’ve been allowed as an actor before on different movies to just do whatever I wanted, take all the time I wanted, make any choice I wanted, and I get nervous then…because I know that no one is minding the store.

Somebody has to make choices somewhere.

Yeah, and a lot of actors think things like, “I wish that John Cassavetes could direct me in every single movie that I ever do.” But he [Cassavetes] had a specific quality, a specific sense of humor. He had very specific talents. A lot of actors just think it’s like, “One, two, three, go!” and it’s free jazz. I think, a lot of actors believe that “John Cassavetes” equals, “I can do whatever I want,” which I’m sure was not true.

David is based on a real person from the original memoir by Lynn Barber. Where there any specific things that you took from the memoir in terms of his mannerisms?

I learned that his accent was a strange thing, that it went in and out of different accents. And I was really wanting to do that. It would have been really hard, but even if I had done it, exactly how do you do it? Everybody knows that I’m an American actor, and they wouldn’t have been able to accept it, because they would have just thought my accent was awful. So that’s the benefit of casting a Brit, he could have done that, he could have done this varying accent. But I did tell myself, I mean I put it in my noggin, and I said, “All right, well, if my accent falters in a scene, it’s totally fine.”


(Peter Sarsgaard, Natalie Portman, and Zach Braff, above, in GARDEN STATE.)

Let’s talk a bit about your early years. You were born in Illinois, is that right?

Yeah, Scott Air Force Base in southern Illinois. It’s right across the river from St. Louis. My dad was in the Air Force, but my dad was also with IBM. I moved to St. Louis, and we lived in a number of different places. And then, when I was ten, we moved to Oklahoma City. During this time I would go down to Memphis quite a bit, and I’d go to Mississippi quite a bit, and I’d go to Arkansas quite a bit, because I have family there. My parents…my mother’s from Memphis, my dad’s from West Point, Mississippi. So I felt a lot of Southern influence in my life. And then for high school, I moved to Connecticut and went to a Jesuit high school in Connecticut, and then I went back to St. Louis for college (Washington University). Then I came to New York in ’93.

What was the experience of attending a Jesuit high school like for you?

It was probably the first time that anybody ever told me I was smart. I’d been kind of a very poor student, I mean like a shockingly, shockingly poor student, and was not allowed to even take a language class, because they thought that I couldn’t handle it. In junior high. Actually, that was a big experience for me: They said, “Take a reading class.” Which was basically…I just read books for an hour every day, and that’s all the class was, you could read any book you want. And I think that was probably a very significant experience, because I did extremely well on the entry exam into this high school, especially on the lit part. And I was put into this thing called Honors Humanities which had like five other kids. But I still always felt like I was misplaced somehow, because I still had the identity of not being the smart kid. These kids all acted like smart kids, and I mean, they all looked like smart kids. And I was a soccer player, so I was really the only athlete that was in this program. Then I went to college at Bard, for one year, and a little trick-or-treat over at Bard College for Halloween, and then went back to…I just missed St. Louis. I think if you’ve moved around as much as I have, sometimes there’s just one place that you choose to call home. And it’d probably make more sense if I called Connecticut home, because I went to high school there, and my parents live there now, but Connecticut just never quite got me. Long Island Sound. I can’t quite do Long Island Sound.

I remember, actually, when I first came to Connecticut, I was on the road with my mother, and we were carpooling to school, and I saw a pheasant on the side of the road that’d been killed, and on the way home, I tried to convince everybody to stop to let me bag it. I had gotten a bag at school, because I tied flies, and you can use pheasant feathers to tie flies, for fly-fishing. And that’s one of those moments where you can feel how profoundly different you are than everyone else. Everyone was like, “What are you doing?” I mean it was a rather eccentric thing to do in any place - in Oklahoma it would’ve been slightly eccentric, but there at least they would’ve known what tying flies was. In Connecticut, they were like, “You’re going to tie flies…with a feather? Is this a poem you’re telling us? What are you doing?” Anyway, I went home, and my mom and I came back, and we bagged it, and we skinned it - actually, my mother skinned it for me. And I tied flies with it. [laughs]

Had you tried acting during your younger years?

No, I didn’t act. I mean, I played Linus, in a play in Oklahoma, but it was like a school thing.

“You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” ?

Yeah, “Don’t worry, we’ll get the kite out of the tree.” In one way or another, I’ve been playing Linus for a long time [laughs]. And then, in college at Washington University, the soccer just kinda deteriorated, and I just wasn’t enough of an athlete. I’d played since I was a boy, and I had the feel in my mind for the game, but just, you know, at a certain level…because Washington University had a great team, I started playing, and I went and practiced with them, played a few games, and I just couldn’t keep up with it. And so I looked for something else to substitute, and it was acting. And I just did it on a lark, really, you know, I thought it’d be a good place to meet girls, and it is [Peter holds up his wedding ring, laughs].

Did acting feel “right” immediately as you started doing it?

Uh-huh. I remember being in this gymnasium where we had acting classes, which was a weird place to have an acting class, because it had a basketball court. And I got assigned, I don’t even remember what the text was, and I memorized something and spoke it for the first time. It was me and this other guy. You know, when you first go to do it, it’s like being in a dream or something. It doesn’t feel that way now, and I actually feel that that’s not a preferable way for it to feel, you know, but some actors have this idea that, you know, to get lost in it, and somehow not remember what you did, is good. Well, I can tell you a lot of things that we did in here over the last couple of minutes, and I think, for me, I try to have it feel as much like that as possible. I’d like to remember that I drank this [indicates tea] and you didn’t. You know what I mean? But I did have that [dream] feeling with acting at first, that I was maybe reveling in emotional states that I had never allowed myself to feel, that I was connected to another person, in a way that I didn’t allow myself to feel in life, so that you are suddenly really kind of hyper-connected to someone. But then you, as an actor, you start to realize, of course, it’s not always like that, so you look for different types of connections, than just feeling, say, like your first falling in love. I’ve seen young actors just sob. Sob, sob, sob, sob, sob through a scene. And I think, god, that must feel amazing. You know? But you don’t want to do that all the time.

(Sarsgaard, with Hilary Swank, above, in BOYS DON'T CRY.)

You eventually found your way to Manhattan where you started more intense acting training. You were cast in Dead Man Walking and then you were cast in The Man in the Iron Mask.

I think I was cast in that movie because someone thought I sounded like John Malkovich. I play his son in the film.

Did you discuss that with him at all?

Yeah, they talked about it all the time. I’m aware that I have some quality in my voice, and he, you know…he has a unique voice. So, we have unique voices. But that was great, because I got to live in Paris, and do very little work actually, and just learn a lot. The same thing is true in Dead Man Walking. You know, it’s great when your first roles are roles where you are observing other actors acting most of the time. When I was doing Dead Man Walking, there was this scene where [director] Tim Robbins suddenly thought, “It would be really great if you sat in for Sean and did his lines in this scene, after he does them.” So Sean did the scene, and then I sat there and I acted the scene with Susan Sarandon - playing Sean - playing my character, but it was like the dead guy and suddenly the murderer turns into the victim. And that was very informative, to realize just by doing it right after he’d done it, how awesome Sean was. Because you just go, “Oh.” [laughs] So I had lots of great early experiences like that as an actor where I got to actually learn, versus a lot of actors now. There’s always been this lust for youth, but, you know, at this point, taking young, young actors who haven’t done many films, and putting them in enormous films with enormous amounts of responsibility, and then expecting them to perform…I’m just so glad that didn’t happen to me. Because I worked a lot, and I did plays, and I did television, and I did the odd movie, but until Boys Don’t Cry (in 1999), I had many years there of just working anonymously. And by the time I did Boys Don’t Cry, I was more fully formed as an actor, and I knew what I was doing in that movie, and I felt ready to go.

I’ve been successful at it sometimes, and not, since then. It just depends on the scenario and who you’re working with, who the collaborator is, but I really, really just try to trust everyone I work with a certain amount, even if in the end it would’ve been better had I not listened to them. You know? Because you gotta go down swinging. I don’t want to play safe as an actor through a bunch of movies, and so, that’s how I wound up on this one. There’s probably only a third of the movies that I’ve done that I would be interested in watching, but I feel like that’s…for a baseball player, that’d be a pretty good average.