The Honourable Woman
Eve Best, left, and Maggie Gyllenhaal in The
Honourable Woman. Photograph: Robert Viglasky/BBC/Drama Republic
In recent times, expectations for lead female characters in British TV
thrillers have been ratcheted up to dauntingly high levels. First there was the
icily cool performance of Gillian Anderson, the sexually liberated police
detective in The Fall. Then earlier this year in The Line of Duty, Keeley Hawes
was dizzyingly good as a suspected corrupt police officer. Now it's the turn of
the American actress Maggie Gyllenhaal to see if she can grip our attention with
something equally complex and intriguing.
Gyllenhaal is the star of The Honourable Woman, Hugo Blick's eight-part
conspiracy thriller centred on the historical triangle of Britain, Israel and
Palestine. She plays the philanthropic Baroness Nessa Stein, the heir of a
murdered Zionist arms dealer, who is attempting to use her family wealth to
improve Israeli-Palestinian relations.
In the opening episode Gyllenhaal showed that she can handle an English
accent without looking as if she's straining to remember vowel sounds. So
effortless was her Kensington enunciation that it enabled the viewer to focus on
a plot that required an awful lot of concentration.
Blick, who made 2011's bewildering The Shadow Line, likes to offer his actors
plenty of opportunity for stagey silences and impassive expressions, but
initially at least, Gyllenhaal plays Nessa as a morally earnest idealist, a
carefully composed blue stocking in ermine.
The accuracy of the accent should come as no surprise, as Gyllenhaal has
twice before played an Englishwoman – in Nanny McPhee Returns, under the
tutelage of Emma Thompson, which is a bit like being schooled by the Queen, and
in Hysteria, which did the admirable job of dramatising the invention of the
vibrator.
Both those roles came in feature films and only a few years ago the presence
of a Hollywood actress in a British TV series would have denoted a sharp
downturn in her career opportunities. Nowadays, cinema is increasingly the
preserve of teen comedies and the most ambitious drama is often be found on
television.
Gyllenhaal herself admits to falling prey to the old system of ranking. "I
think in my own mind there still is a hierarchy," she recently said. "But then I
think, this is better work than I've done in my life. I feel more proud of this
than anything."
That's no small self-praise, coming from a woman who was nominated for an
Oscar for her part in Crazy Heart and who drew widespread critical plaudits with
2002's Secretary, playing a former psychiatric patient with a penchant for being
spanked by her boss. When she walked on screen wearing a tight skirt, high heels
and across her shoulders a rod to which her hands were manacled, it was as clear
as a buttock welt that here was a genuinely idiosyncratic talent.
Not because the scene was sexually charged, but because the then 23-year-old
Gyllenhaal brought to it a captivating quality somewhere between sweet innocence
and crazed conviction.
For a brief moment, it was she, more than her younger brother Jake, who was
the toast of the town. She has said that during the period after Secretary's
acclamation, she was invited to a lot of parties, which she enjoyed until she
realised that it was not her personality but her earning potential that people
were interested in. However, at one dinner party she met the actor Peter
Sarsgaard, best known here for his role as a creepy groomer in An Education.
Sarsgaard and Gyllenhaal may sound like a Swedish law firm, but that didn't stop
them forming a partnership. They got married in 2009 and have two daughters.
With her Betty Boop face and bookish intelligence – she studied literature at
Columbia University – Gyllenhaal was never cut out to be paparazzi-fodder. Like
Shirley MacLaine, she is a vivaciously attractive woman who happens to have a
prettier brother. But as with MacLaine (sister of Warren Beatty), she has a
strong claim to be the more gifted sibling, acting-wise.
Understandably, Gyllenhaal discourages speculation about sibling rivalry.
"He's one of my best friends and I really adore him," is one of her stock
replies to the repeated question about Jake. They are the children of the
director-turned-academic Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner. They
grew up in New York in a bohemian environment that featured a cast of famous
actors – Paul Newman was Jake's godfather.
By Gyllenhaal's own account, her parents, who split up five years ago after
31 years of marriage, are "left of Trotsky". Her "very operatic and baroque"
father was an early critic of Obama for what he perceived as a lack of
radicalism. Gyllenhaal, having been a vocal supporter of the president, left her
disillusionment to later. As she put it: "He's broken my heart in a lot of ways.
I'm not clear what Obama believes in – and I wish I did."
She's one of those actors who thinks it's important to use whatever fame
she's granted to ventilate her political concerns. "If I care about the state of
the world then I should say pay attention to who the president is and what his
policies are, pay attention to Iran and what's happening in Gaza," she says.
As a result, she has spoken out in support of Chelsea (formerly Bradley)
Manning and, less controversially, Pussy Riot. In other words, Gyllenhaal is the
kind of Hollywood liberal who can place Fox News presenters under threat of
myocardial infarction. But what she's not prepared to express an opinion on, it
seems, is the issue of Israel and Palestine, which is at the heart of The
Honourable Woman.
When asked during promotion of the show what she thought of the situation
vis-a-vis Israel, Gyllenhaal, whose mother is Jewish, declined. Instead, she
said that the series "articulated so beautifully how incredibly complex it is".
You can say that again. In later episodes, The Honourable Woman apparently takes
a more intimate dramatic turn as Nessa, according to Gyllenhaal, "starts
sleeping with strangers in stairwells" and "cracks up and becomes more human".
She said in an interview that she "related" to that experience, meaning, we can
safely assume, in the sense of becoming more human rather than sleeping with
strangers in stairwells.
Yet although she speaks of the role as a mixture of career high and key stage
in her personal development, she very nearly turned it down. She was concerned
about uprooting her children, but more than that she took an instant dislike to
Blick, the writer, producer, director.
"I was really put off by him," she said, "and I thought, 'What a drag,
because I really like this script and I can't seem to communicate with this
guy.'"
She says Blick invited himself to a disastrous dinner party at her house in
Park Slope, Brooklyn, in which she made stinging nettle pasta and he made barbed
jokes about going into anaphylactic shock. The hostess was not impressed.
Relations obviously improved because she now says that she's never had "a more
loving, inspiring collaboration", which is probably actor-speak for still being
on speaking terms.
The other relationship that blossomed during filming was Gyllenhaal's with
London. After graduating from Columbia, she had come to do a summer term at Rada
and enjoyed herself. But having completed The Honourable Woman, she says that if
she could persuade Sarsgaard she would like to move to London.
Her one doubt about the UK is the way she says that Jewishness is treated
here. "It was a culture shock for me. In America, we don't expect there to be
any social difference [between Jews and non-Jews]. I don't seem Jewish, I don't
have a Jewish name. No one would ever know. But when I came here people started
talking in a different way about what it meant to be Jewish. People would talk
about specific areas of London being Jewish, about Jewish ways of behaving."
Nessa does have a Jewish name, but otherwise no one would ever know. Who she
really is and what she really wants remain for the time being a mystery. Over
the rest of the summer, all eyes will be on the enigmatic Gyllenhaal as the
truth is slowly and no doubt perplexingly revealed.
THE GYLLENHAAL FILE
Born New York City on 16 November 1977 to the director Stephen Gyllenhaal and
screenwriter Naomi Foner. The household was "loud, noisy, somewhat chaotic".
Best of times If she's to believed, now. She says The Honourable Woman is her
most demanding role yet and that it's stretched her as an actress and a person.
But in terms of more tangible judgments, playing Batman's girlfriend in The Dark
Knight has been her peak of success.
Worst of times She's not someone who has endured a major public setback but,
after the initial promise of Secretary, she became a little lost in small
independent films that had a short lifespan. She says now that she's "fed up
making stuff that only 10 people watch".
What she says "There are certain things you can take a stand on. You can say,
'I don't want to have a baby so I will have an abortion.' I believe that is
fine. You can draw a line in the sand about that. But with Israel and Palestine
it is so complicated that, ultimately, the sand will fall between your fingers
if you talk that way."
What others say "In terms of who you're going to spend your life with, I
found pretty much everything I desire in a person - she's a phenomenal actress,
so hot, so intelligent - which I don't think happens to that many people. She's
a one-stop shop." Peter Sarsgaard, her husband.
