Peter Sarsgaard

Background

Ethnicity: Peter Sarsgaard has Danish (from a great-grandfather), Norwegian (from a great-grandmother), English, German, Irish, Scots-Irish/Northern Irish, and Austrian, ancestry.

Peter Sarsgaard was born on March 7, 1971, in St. Clair County, Illinois, the United States, to Judy Lea (née Reinhardt) and John Dale Sarsgaard. His father was an Air Force Engineer and thus the family moved a lot during Sarsgaard’s childhood.

As a child, he watched soccer on TV all the time and aspired to become a soccer player. He also took ballet classes when he heard that some soccer players learned ballet to improve their coordination; however, he gave up soccer when he suffered many concussions while playing, and became interested in writing and theater.

His surname originates in Denmark, where his paternal great-great-grandparents were born.

Education

Sarsgaard attended Fairfield College Preparatory School, a private Jesuit boys' school in Connecticut, where he became interested in film. He graduated from high school in 1989.

He commenced his graduate studies at Bard College in New York but later transferred to Washington University in St. Louis. During this time he formed a theatre group called Mama’s Pot Roast. While at Washington University he performed plays in a branch of New York’s 'Actor Studio' located at St. Louis. He finished his graduation in 1993 as a History Major and moved to New York.

Career

After quitting his soccer career due to concussion injury, he started his acting career from New York’s Actors Studio. He played as a servant in theatrical comedy Tartuffe at college.

From 1995 to 1997, Peter Sarsgaard appeared in guest roles in various TV series. His first foray into films came with Dead Man Walking where he played the part of a teenager murdered by Sean Penn. In 1995, Sarsgaard started his theatrical career with a production title Laura Dennis. His performance was highly praised and since then he has appeared in many notable productions

After working in various Indie films he saw his first commercial success in 1998 in the film The Man in the Iron Mask. In this film, he played the role of Raoul, the son of Athos, played by John Malkovich. In 1999, Sarsgaard played the role of a murderer John Lotter in the independent movie Boys Don’t Cry which was based on a true story. His performance was universally praised with critics remarking that his depiction of the sociopath had made it very believable.

In 2001, in the movie The Center of the World, Sarsgaard played his first lead role. He played a computer engineer, Richard Longman going wild in Las Vegas. The film was not received well but critics praised his performance.

2003 saw the release of The Shattered Glass where he portrayed the role of the editor Charles Lane of The New Republic in the real-life story of journalist Stephen Glass. His performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination.

The movie Kinsey based on the life of Alfred Kinsey, who studied human sexuality, came out in 2004. Sarsgaard's role as Martin Clyde was highly talked about as it involved frontal nudity and kissing Liam Neeson. He was hailed as the best character actor of his generation and was nominated for many awards and won one.

Sarsgaard continued to play supporting roles in 2005 with Flightplan which became a huge success worldwide making him a well-known actor around the world. Sarsgaard did theater along with his films and in 2008 made his Broadway debut at The Royal Court Theater with Anton Chekov’s The Seagull.

In 2010, he hosted an episode of the show Saturday Night Live. In the introduction, he did a comic piece that played on his surname, where he tried to sell face masks preventing SARS called SARS-guard.

The movie Blue Jasmine, released in 2013, brought Peter Sarsgaard and Woody Allen together. Sarsgaard played a diplomat named Dwight opposite Cate Blanchett. He had only read his part of the script so he knew what his role was, but throughout the filming, he didn't know the whole story.

In 2016, he portrayed the role of Robert Kennedy in the film Jackie. Sarsgaard remarked it was one of the most surreal things he had done, pretending to be Robert Kennedy waiting in front of the White House at the funeral for JFK.

In 2018, Peter Sarsgaard played the role of CIA chief Martin Schmidt in the TV mini-series The Looming Tower based on the book of the same name. The series shows the events leading up to 9/11. Sarsgaard took five months to consider doing the role and finally decided to take it up when he could not stop thinking about the script.

In September 2019, Peter Sarsgaard appeared in The Sound of Silence, a 2019 American drama film directed by Michael Tyburski. It was screened in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The plot centers on Peter Lucian, played by Peter Sarsgaard, a "house tuner," working on the sonic environment of homes.

Achievements

• For his portrayal of Charles Lane in Shattered Glass, Sarsgaard won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor and was nominated for the 2004 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  
  Flightplan was the highest-grossing movie of 2005 and was one of his biggest commercial successes.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Jarhead

    (Jarhead (the self-imposed moniker of the Marines) follows...)

    2005
  • The Dying Gaul

    (Patricia Clarkson (Good Night and Good Luck, The Station ...)

    2005
  • Night Moves

    (Batman vs Superman's Jesse Eisenberg stars alongside Dako...)

    2013
  • In the Electric Mist

    (While on an investigation into a series of grisly murders...)

    2009
  • The Skeleton Key

    (When Caroline Ellis (Hudson) takes a job in Louisiana's b...)

    2005
  • Shattered Glass

    (This fact-based film depicts the rise and fall of disgrac...)

    2003
  • The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

    (A recent college grad spends his final summer with a girl...)

    2008
  • Very Good Girls

    (Two girls (Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen), both dete...)

    2013
  • Elegy

    (Director Isabel Coixet's elegant tale of obsession explor...)

    2008
  • The Man In The Iron Mask

    (The swashbuckling story of the Three Musketeers - their f...)

    1998
  • Black Mass

    (In 1970s South Boston, FBI Agent John Connolly persuades ...)

    2015
  • The Cell

    (When Stargher, a serial killer who drowns his victims in ...)

    2000
  • Dead Man Walking

    (Scheduled to be put to death for brutally slaying two tee...)

    1995
  • Loving Pablo

    (Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz star in the true story of...)

    2017
  • Green Lantern

    (Protectors of peace and justice, the Green Lantern Corp m...)

    2011
  • Rendition

    (A nail-biting thriller about a man who mysteriously disap...)

    2007
  • Pawn Sacrifice

    (In a gripping true story, American chess prodigy Bobby Fi...)

    2014
  • The Center of the World

    (The titular center of the world is a matter of perspectiv...)

    2001
  • Jackie

    (Natalie Portman stars in this powerfully stirring drama a...)

    2016
  • Knight and Day

    (Big screen superstars Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz come to...)

    2010
  • K-19: The Widow Maker

    (When Russia's first nuclear submarine malfunctions on its...)

    2002
  • Boys Don't Cry

    (A young transgender man explores his gender identity and ...)

    1999
  • Desert Blue

    (When cable TV starlet Skye gets stuck in a tiny Californi...)

    1998
  • Year of the Dog

    (Peggy (Shannon) is a happy-go-lucky secretary who is a gr...)

    2007
  • Empire

    (An ambitious South Bronx heroin dealer gets hung up tryin...)

    2002
  • Unconditional Love

    (When the one man she has adored for years, Victor Fox, is...)

    2002
  • Experimenter

    (Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) conducts an experiment ...)

    2015
  • Blue Jasmine

    (Cate Blanchett stars as a former New York socialite teete...)

    2013
  • Orphan

    (A husband and wife who recently lost their baby adopt a 9...)

    2009
  • Garden State

    (A quietly troubled young man returns home for his mother'...)

    2004
  • The Salton Sea

    (The Salton Sea is a character-driven crime thriller about...)

    2002
  • Robot and Frank

    (Set in the near future, an ex-jewel thief receives a gift...)

    2012
  • Kinsey

    (Kinsey is a portrait of researcher Alfred Kinsey, driven ...)

    2004
  • Flightplan

    (A woman decides to return home to America with her young ...)

    2005
  • Another Day In Paradise

    (An exhilarating portrayal of a family of professional thi...)

    1998
  • The Magnificent Seven

    (Director Antoine Fuqua brings a modern vision to a classi...)

    2016
  • Lovelace

    (Follows the life of reluctant porn star Linda Lovelace.)

    2013
  • An Education

    (Three time Academy Award® Nominated Film. A coming-of-age...)

    2009

• TV series

  • The Looming Tower

    (The Looming Tower traces the rising threat of Osama Bin L...)

    2018
  • The Slap

    (Meet Hector, a public servant, husband, father and valued...)

    2015
  • The Killing Season 3

    (A year after closing the Rosie Larsen case, Sarah Linden ...)

    2013

Religion

Sarsgaard was raised as a Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy. In an interview with The New York Times, Sarsgaard confirmed that he followed Catholicism, saying: "I like the death-cult aspect of Catholicism. Every religion is interested in death, but Catholicism takes it to a particularly high level. [...] Seriously, in Catholicism, you're supposed to love your enemy. That really impressed me as a kid, and it has helped me as an actor. [...] The way that I view the characters I play is part of my religious upbringing. To abandon curiosity in all personalities, good or bad, is to give up hope in humanity."

Politics

Sarsgaard is a supporter of Bernie Sanders. When he was asked about his takes on Donald Trump, Sarsgaard said: "I don't know. He's, I guess, mildly entertaining in the way that checkers is or something."

Views

Sarsgaard is vegan, but he says he cooks meat for his children.

In June 2013, Sarsgaard and numerous other celebrities appeared in a video showing support for Chelsea Manning.

Quotations: "When you don't have power, which I still don't in the grand Hollywood scheme of things, you get offered things that you wouldn't ordinarily be offered. Frequently, other people know what I can do more than I do."

"I'm very much against the death penalty. It's very easy to do a piece about someone who's been railroaded by the system, who's innocent. If you don't believe in the death penalty, you have to take an extreme circumstance - someone who's indefensible - to see if it still applies. Otherwise, the death penalty applies in some cases."

Personality

Sarsgaard admits to having a lifelong fear of flying.

Interests

• gardening

• Politicians

  Bernie Sanders

• Writers

  Scott Jurek

• Sport & Clubs

  running, soccer

• Athletes

  David Icke, Tony Dorsett

• Music & Bands

  Woody Guthrie

Connections

Among his most notable romantic relationships, Sarsgaard dated burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese and model and actress Shalom Harlow. Early in his film career, he dated photographer Malerie Marder, a close friend from his days attending Bard College, who had featured Sarsgaard in some of her early work. Sarsgaard began a romantic relationship with actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, the sister of his close friend Jake Gyllenhaal, in 2002. In April 2006, they announced their engagement, and on May 2, 2009, they married in a small ceremony in Brindisi, Italy. They have two daughters.

Father:

John Dale Sarsgaard

Mother:

Judy Lea Sarsgaard

Spouse:

Maggie Gyllenhaal,

ex-girlfriend:

Dita Von Teese

Von Teese claims that the Sarsgaard cheated on her with model Shalom Harlow.

ex-girlfriend:

Shalom Harlow

ex-girlfriend:

Malerie Marder

colleague:

Leonardo DiCaprio

colleague:

Hugh Laurie

colleague:

Casey Affleck

colleague:

Hilary Swank

colleague:

Jennifer Lopez

colleague:

Harrison Ford

colleague:

Jim Parsons

colleague:

Vera Farmiga

colleague:

Liv Tyler

colleague:

Amanda Seyfried

colleague:

Alec Baldwin

colleague:

Jesse Eisenberg

colleague:

Demi Moore

colleague:

Winona Ryder