Issue Date: November 21, 2004
Peter who?
Raw or refined, "Kinsey" actor Peter Sarsgaard disappears into his roles. And if you can't quite place him, he's fine with that.
By Kevin Maynard
Peter Sarsgaard is hard to figure out. Beneath the scruffy haircut and beard, he has softly drawn features and a gentle voice. But somehow, he still exudes masculinity.
"I actually don't have to worry about pleasing fans."
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That mixture of rawness and refinement may be why the 33-year-old actor has been able to disappear into such disparate roles. He went from playing a sweet-faced murder victim in "Dead Man Walking" (his first movie) to portraying one of the trashy, homophobic killers in "Boys Don't Cry."
Now, in "Kinsey," a not-your-average biopic about Alfred Kinsey, who shocked the nation by chronicling Americans' sexual habits in the '40s, Sarsgaard mashes that duality into one character. Liam Neeson plays the surprisingly repressed pioneer researcher; Laura Linney is his loving but put-upon wife. And Sarsgaard, as Kinsey's buttoned-up but secretly free-spirited assistant, Clyde Martin, has affairs with both.
"The sex we have is funny and awkward," he says of the scenes with Neeson. "It's actually not as uncomfortable as love scenes where my co-star and I were truly [attracted to] each other." (Like who? After some prying, he cites Molly Parker, his co-star in the 2001 indie "The Center of the World.")
Sarsgaard's Hollywood currency is fast increasing: He got a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as a doggedly virtuous editor in 2003's "Shattered Glass," and he stole scenes from Zach Braff as a grungy, stoned gravedigger in summer's "Garden State." Yet he refuses to worry about pleasing fans. "I don't have to," he explains over a bowl of cold cucumber soup at a West Hollywood sandwich shop. Casual in a rumpled white dress shirt and blue jeans, he elicits vague looks of recognition from two 30-something women who pass on their way to the counter, but nobody stops. And he likes it that way. "People usually only know me from one of the roles I play," he says. "I don't have to carry around a little suitcase full of fans that like me."
Born on an Air Force base in Illinois, Sarsgaard got used to suitcases as his dad, who worked for IBM, moved the family all over the Midwest. At Washington University in St. Louis, he stumbled across a visiting Actors Studio class taught by Ellen Burstyn and Shelley Winters and soon left college for New York. He did one off-Broadway play before landing "Dead Man Walking." "I took that class to meet famous people," he admits. "I thought I could do plays, maybe bag a commercial and live off the residuals, make a teacher's salary."
Today, Sarsgaard lives nicely in Manhattan's West Village with his girlfriend of three years, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, 27. He has a thriller with Kate Hudson on the way and is filming another, with Jodie Foster.
But the work he's proudest of is always the edgiest, like "The Dying Gaul," a no-budget indie drama about a gay screenwriter in an affair with a married development exec, hitting film festivals early next year. "On the "Kinsey" scale, zero being exclusively heterosexual and six being exclusively homosexual, I'm willing to admit that I might not be a total zero," Sarsgaard says playfully. "I just think it's important to pull things out there that stretch the boundaries a little bit."
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Sarsgaard reveals his ...
Geeky hobby. "Internet chess. I play for hours. But I can't get over a certain level. Plus, it's weird: Sometimes you log on and someone says, 'Check out my dirty pictures.' "
Retro music taste. "I love Devo, Lou Reed, old David Bowie, Kraftwerk."
Forbidden crush. "A beautiful teacher who taught a paleo-ethno-botany class. I wasn't even enrolled in the class. I just showed up for it."
Dream job. "I wanted to be like the Pulitzer Prize-winning jack-of-all-trades writers. I admired the outlaws -- Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski."
Worst vice. "Smoking. I'm on again, off again. I think I'm about to start again, because Maggie [Gyllenhaal, his actress girlfriend] is doing it for a movie."
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10 years of diverse roles
"Kinsey," 2004
"Garden State," 2004
"Shattered Glass," 2003
K-19: The Widowmaker, 2002
The Salton Sea, 2002
"The Center of the World," 2001
"Boys Don't Cry," 1999
The Man in the Iron Mask, 1998
"Dead Man Walking," 1995
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