{"id":744233,"date":"2026-07-05T07:53:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T07:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/744233\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T07:53:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T07:53:17","slug":"maggie-gyllenhaal-on-love-of-directing-not-celebrating-july-4th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/744233\/","title":{"rendered":"Maggie Gyllenhaal on Love of Directing, Not Celebrating July 4th"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maggie Gyllenhaal<\/a>\u00a0(The Bride!,\u00a0The Lost Daughter,\u00a0Secretary,\u00a0The Honourable Woman) shared the pleasure she gets out of directing and her transition from acting during a chat with a group of journalists at the Karlovy Vary\u00a0International\u00a0Film Festival<\/a>\u00a0on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Discussing the work of a director, she suggested: \u201cI feel it is very similar to being a mother. You become a mother \u2013 all of a sudden you are actually responsible for the life of another person. That is both incredibly exciting, powerful, and absolutely terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

She concluded: \u201cIn terms of responsibility, it is really major. That\u2019s a really interesting thing about directing, way more so than producing, and also way more so than acting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gyllenhaal also shared the joy she experiences as a director in the prep process with her cinematographer \u201cthinking through the movie in a joined imaginary world,\u201d explaining: \u201cIt\u2019s so cool, it\u2019s so intense, and there is the pleasure for me in being on set with a plan with a shared language that we\u2019ve built together.\u201d<\/p>\n

She concluded: \u201cThat was new to me, and I didn\u2019t know how much I would love it. So sometimes when people ask me if I want to act, I think no, I want to prep with my cinematographer, and I want to keep learning this language that I have gotten so much pleasure out of learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gyllenhaal also addressed women directors. \u201cDirecting is, historically and still, predominantly a male job,\u201d she shared. \u201cI found that when I went to do it, I was treated with a kind of respect that I had never encountered before, just because that\u2019s how one treats the director.\u201d<\/p>\n

She traveled to the fest in the Czech spa town, accompanied by her husband\u00a0Peter Sarsgaard<\/a>, to receive the\u00a0festival\u2019s President\u2019s Award<\/a> at Friday night\u2019s opening ceremony<\/a> of KVIFF<\/a>\u2018s double anniversary edition, its\u00a060th fest<\/a>\u00a0in its 80th year.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s 250th birthday also came up. \u201cIt is the Fourth of July today, so we\u2019re celebrating it here,\u201d Gyllenhaal initially said, before continuing: \u201cI\u2019m abstaining from celebration this year. I\u2019m not celebrating the Fourth of July.\u201d<\/p>\n

The filmmaker was also asked about how her daughter Ramona was last year among people arrested at a Columbia University protest against Israel\u2019s war in Gaza. \u201cMy daughter is her own woman,\u201d Gyllenhaal replied. \u201cI\u2019m sure you\u2019re not surprised to hear that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gyllenhaal, who is also introducing a late Saturday screening of her genre-bending The Bride!, which disappointed at the box office<\/a>, recently reteamed with Warner Bros.<\/a>, with the studio optioning the Rachel Kushner novel\u00a0Creation Lake\u00a0for her to write and develop as a directing vehicle. Gyllenhaal is also set to produce the project.<\/p>\n

Asked about the project on Saturday, she said: \u201cIt\u2019s in the very, very beginning of the process. I feel like it\u2019s in the part of the creative [process] that is so personal and private and secret. I\u2019m very excited about it. I love the author, Rachel Kushner. I love the book. I have my own unusual take on it, but it\u2019s just beginning to simmer.\u201d<\/p>\n

20 years <\/a>ago,\u00a0Gyllenhaal won a competitive award at KVIFF as best actress for her role in Laurie Collyer\u2019s drama\u00a0Sherrybaby, in which she played a young woman who gets released from prison and is recovering from a\u00a0heroin addiction.\u00a0Sherrybaby\u00a0also won Karlovy Vary\u2019s Crystal Globe award back in 2006. Back then, the actress couldn\u2019t come to town, though. <\/p>\n

In accepting her 2026 honor, she recalled a study abroad semester to the Czech Republic, including a visit to Karlovy Vary, that, she shared, was \u201cpart of what pushed me to be a director to express my view of the world, however strange and challenging, and however different.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maggie Gyllenhaal\u00a0(The Bride!,\u00a0The Lost Daughter,\u00a0Secretary,\u00a0The Honourable Woman) shared the pleasure she gets out of directing and her transition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88,2091,305967,305968,305969,105582],"class_list":["post-744233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-karlovy-vary-international-film-festival","tag-kviff","tag-kviff-2026","tag-maggie-gyllenhaal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}