Style - January 30th 2005

Thoroughly Modern Maggie
Written by Llewellyn Smith | Photography by Miles Aldridge

She’s smart, sexy and she runs with the chicest of the New York acting crowd. Maggie Gyllenhaal has a new kind of cool, says Julia Llewellyn Smith

"I’m sooo tired,” whispers Maggie Gyllenhaal, rolling her round blue eyes. It’s breakfast time at the Plaza Athénée in Paris, and the actress is forking up an omelette while telling me about the “great little place” where she had dinner last night. “A friend told me about it. I went on my own, in a taxi, and I ate frogs’ legs, which I’d never had before — unbelievable — then the most incredible tiny lamb chops. And somehow, by the end of the meal, I’d made friends with the owner — not in that way; he was an old, fat French guy. He gave me a glass of champagne, and I told him my birthday was coming up, so he gave me some birthday cake. I didn’t get back until 1.30am, and then I had to pack.” She lowers her eyelashes. “But it was worth it. It was so much fun.” Can you imagine Catherine Zeta-Jones or J.Lo enjoying a night like this, turning up at a restaurant without an entourage, a chauffeur-driven Mercedes and possibly a string of dietary requests faxed days in advance? But it’s a typical night for Gyllenhaal, sister of the equally hip Jake and star of such cult movies as Secretary and the soon-to-be released Criminal.

Gyllenhaal, 27, represents the new breed of Hollywood actors who are redefining cool by turning their back on the material trappings of stardom and promoting a fierce sense of individuality. They are getting out there and engaging with the world around them. With members such as Kirsten Dunst, Liv Tyler and Scarlett Johansson, this maverick gang is keeping it real and steering clear of the brash consumerism that has defined their profession for so long.

Which is not to say that there aren’t perks to being Maggie Gyllenhaal. She has been in Paris for the past few days as a guest of Louis Vuitton. “Marc Jacobs invited me to come and see his work, which was kind of him,” she says, taking a sip of green tea, which she ordered in good French. “But I’m a little bit wary about doing this kind of stuff.

“At first, I was enthusiastic about being given all these free things, but now I am aware that it’s all a business deal. It’s not that people love me, it’s that they are getting something out of it too. You have to be discerning about what you take and what you don’t take if you don’t want to feel like a hooker.”

Fashion apart, she has spent most of her time in Paris chilling out. “I’ve just been wandering around with my plan de Paris, taking it all in. I know the city pretty well,” she says. Is she recognised? “Sometimes. There were some Americans once. They were so strange, all like, ‘Oh my God, it’s her.’ I mean, I like people saying ‘I really like your work’, but when they act as if I’m not a person ... ” She shakes her head ruefully.

There is an extraordinary sweetness to Gyllenhaal. If she were a fruit, she would be a ripe strawberry. Waiters gather round our table like wasps to a picnic to serve her. Tall and slender, in jeans, a cotton top and no make-up, she has a heart-shaped face, a perfect, porcelain complexion and a breathy, Marilyn Monroe voice. Yet there is an appraising intelligence behind her smooth brow, a wry twist to the cupid’s-bow mouth that makes it clear she is no pushover. She has a degree in English and eastern religions from Columbia, an Ivy League university, she can talk about far more than the best brand of lip gloss, and she is unashamedly political (during the recent presidential election, she flew to Florida to drive Democrats to the polls, and both she and her brother are outspoken environmental activists).

It’s no coincidence that her most prominent roles have subverted her cute exterior. In her breakthrough film, Secretary, she played a masochistic employee whose face lit up with delight when her boss spanked her. In her latest film, a slick remake of the Argentinian Nine Queens, about two con men, she plays a sexy hotelier who has to compromise her values to get what she wants. “I was interested in the idea, the sort of femme fatale fantasy thing, the lipstick and the high heels,” she says. “I was also interested in the idea of someone lying, because I have a really hard time with that in my life — I am not interested in lying at all.”

With her distaste for superficiality, it’s no surprise that Gyllenhaal isn’t a fan of La-La land; she spends as little time as possible there. Her base is an apartment in New York’s West Village, which she shares with her actor boyfriend, Peter Sarsgaard, star of Shattered Glass and Garden State. “I grew up in Los Angeles, but even as a child, I never felt happy in California,” Gyllenhaal says. “My parents were both New Yorkers, so we were there a lot, and I just always felt more in my own skin there. My brother is happy in California, but whenever I go back, I just think, ‘This is not the right terrain.’ It’s a desert, it’s dry, and all that encourages a certain kind of lifestyle that is not really me. New Yorkers are far more mellow.”

Movies, however, are in her blood: her father is a director, her mother a screenwriter. Gyllenhaal started acting as a child, but decided to get a degree before launching herself onto the audition circuit. She admits it was unnerving to watch Jake, three years her junior, forge ahead with hits like Donnie Darko (in which she had a small role), while she was still waitressing to support herself. “My brother is one of my best friends,” she says, “and I feel very protective of him, but there were times when I’d be taking an exam and thinking, ‘Oh my God, that’s your little brother out there. Why are you buried in a book and not putting yourself out there too?’”

In her early auditions, she was frequently rejected for not being sexy enough. In retrospect, her subtle sensuality was simply ahead of its time. For autumn/winter 2004, she was the face of Miu Miu, which quickly spotted that her kooky style was perfectly in tune with the new, eclectic fashion mood. “She didn’t go for the obvious,” says Katie Grand, who styled the shoot, remembering what clothes she took away with her. “She took a lot of tweed and heavy suiting, an ankle-length dress and platform shoes — the quite bonkers stuff.”

“I find myself much more sexy than I did when I was 22, partly because I’m so much more in command than I was then,” Gyllenhaal affirms. “You see it in all sorts of ways, like in the clothes I wear — I used to wear the most awful fabrics, and not care that they rubbed at my skin. Now I just want to be comfortable, and I’ve realised that’s the sexiest thing of all.”

It is inspiring to be around Gyllenhaal, to watch the sincerity with which she tries to work out how to carve the most honest path through the Hollywood jungle. She grabs a chunk of baguette from the bread basket in front of us and gnaws on it as she confides: “You know, being in Paris these past few days has really made me reflect on how I’ve changed. I was last here three years ago, and I was such a different person then. There was something rapturous about me — everything had to be astonishing, amazing. I was in a relationship that wasn’t working, but I was living in a little bit of a fantasy, like a lot of young women do, with both of us caught up in the idea that love is supposed to be a certain thing, as opposed to acknowledging what we really needed and who we really were.

“I ended that: I moved from LA back to New York. Now everything is calmer, and I’ve realised that that’s still good, that you don’t have to live life as if it’s a novel, that it doesn’t always have to be so dramatic.” She looks around the room and smiles. “I look back and think, ‘What was I thinking?’ I feel like I’m actually growing up. I’ve acquired some wisdom.”

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