For much of her career, Maggie Gyllenhaal has gravitated toward complicated women. In her best films, from Secretary to The Deuce to her Oscar-nominated turn in the wonderful country music film Crazy Heart, and now as the writer-director of the ambitious 2026 calendar release The Bride!, she has built a body of work centered on women with interior lives that don’t fit neatly into boxes. But in a revealing new conversation, she turned that same introspection inward, revealing that early in their careers, she deliberately tried to stay ‘separate’ from her brother.
In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Gyllenhaal reflected on everything from envy and artistic rage to what it meant to direct Jake for the first time in the upcoming The Bride!. And in doing so, she candidly addressed why she once felt the need to define herself separately from him, even though the two were never estranged. In her words:
