Maggie Gyllenhaal has opened up about her evolving relationship with her brother, Brokeback Mountain star Jake.
Gyllenhaal, 48, spoke to The New York Times ahead of the release of the Frankenstein-inspired movie The Bride!, which she directed and which features her brother in a supporting role.
“We’ve never been estranged,” she told the publication, “but we’ve never been as close as we are now.
“We’re finally, maybe in the last five years, more and more and more, even each day, really interacting, which is hard for people to do.”
The Gyllenhaal siblings both started out as child actors, and were the offspring of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Achs.
Jake was the first to find stardom, something that Gyllenhaal admitted was a source of “envy” at the time. “In general, I am very interested in envy,” she mused. “What creates it? I think it’s usually feeling starving, like you don’t have enough.”
But, she added, “there absolutely is enough to go around. But I don’t think I knew that at first, when I was young and Jake was a movie star right away. I don’t think I was in touch with the envy, but it was there.”
Asked about approaching her brother for the part in The Bride!, she recalled: “I waited until I was absolutely sure that asking him to do this part was the right thing to do. I remember asking him and tearing up alone in this hotel room I was in, because it meant so much to me. It meant so much for me to interact with him.”
The film stars Jessie Buckley as “the Bride” and Christian Bale as Frankenstein’s monster, while Zodiac star Jake plays a Hollywood actor named Ronnie Reed.
“In the past, I’ve had to be separate from my family, from my brother,” Gyllenhaal admitted. “Like, cool, I’ve got my own thing going. We both started so young.
“I think [casting him in The Bride!] was just a really honest, vulnerable, what’s underneath rage, reaching out. Just basically saying, I want to interact, and I know that this is a place where we can do it. I’m not asking him to do something that he can’t do. I’m making an offer, which is a generous thing to do.”
The Bride! is in cinemas from 6 March.
