Maggie Gyllenhaal Biography

Long, lean Maggie Gyllenhaal earned critical praise and popular recognition for her starring role in the oddball love story Secretary (2002, with James Spader).

Twenty years later, Gyllenhaal was nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay of the movie she directed, The Lost Daughter (2021).

In the early 2000s, she was suddenly everywhere, appearing in Adaptation (with Nicolas Cage), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (directed by George Clooney) and Mona Lisa Smile (2003, with Julia Roberts and Kirsten Dunst).

A graduate of Columbia University, Gyllenhaal grew up in Los Angeles, where her father worked as a director of TV and films and her mother worked as a screenwriter. Her early roles were directed by her father, Stephen Gyllenhaal, and included the films Waterland (1992, starring Jeremy Irons) and Homegrown (1998, starring Billy Bob Thornton).

She has also appeared onscreen with her brother, movie star Jake Gyllenhaal, most memorably as his sister in Donnie Darko (2001, with Drew Barrymore).

An established lead who often plays supporting roles, she appears in independent and foreign films as well as big-budget Hollywood productions, including John Waters‘s Cecil B. Demented (2000, with Melanie Griffith), Sherrybaby (2006), the animated feature Monster House (2006, with Steve Buscemi), the Oliver Stone movie World Trade Center (2006) and the Will Ferrell comedy Stranger Than Fiction (2006, with Queen Latifah).

In 2008 she co-starred in the blockbuster Batman movie The Dark Knight, playing assistant district attorney Rachel Dawes, and in 2009 she was the love interest to an aging country music star (Jeff Bridges) in Crazy Heart.