Maggie Gyllenhaal

Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

One thing Maggie Gyllenhaal doesn't have to do on the press tour of The Dark Knight' Explain what the movie's about. After three years of anticipation building from 2005's hit Batman Begins, public awareness has reached Spider-Man or Harry Potter levels -- perhaps even higher.

Funny, then, that Gyllenhaal wasn't part of the first movie. Her character, Rachel Dawes, was played by Katie Holmes; when Holmes dropped out (possibly to spend more time with her family, or work on another movie, or because she was fired -- no one ever got a straight answer) Gyllenhaal stepped in to continue the role.

"I'm a fan of Katie Holmes and I think she's a lovely actress and that she did a great job in the previous Batman," Gyllenhaal says. "But I just don't think it would serve anyone for me to try to imitate her or even sort of copy her. The only thing to do really was to think of Rachel Dawes as a new woman in this movie, so that's what I did. At the same time, there are certain plot points and narrative things that she set up in the previous movie that are very important to this movie. Most importantly she said at the end of the last movie that she loves Bruce Wayne and that she understands why he has to be Batman, but that she can't be with him while he is Batman."

Instead, as The Dark Knight opens, Gyllenhaal's character has taken up with Harvey Dent, Gotham's new district attorney played by Aaron Eckhart. Ironically, her vastly different relationships with Bruce and Harvey were mirrored off-screen.

"I find Christian to be very still and intense," she says. "You know a good director will often not block a good scene before you get there -- he'll sort of let the actors work out their own scene, figure out what makes the most sense to us, and then set the camera up. And so with us, we would always find ourselves still and just kind of staring into each others eyes and kind of ESPing each other and that was acting. He was intense."

By contrast, she was able to loosen up a bit with Eckhart. "It was very very different with Aaron Eckhart, who was I think much more like me, you know kind of loose and kind of throw anything at you and he'll take anything you have to give. Christian would spend a lot of time by himself, while Aaron and I would spend lots of time hanging out, talking, playing, joking when we would work together."

Funnily enough, although the trio make up a love triangle, Bruce Wayne actually admires Harvey Dent a great deal for being a public face in Gotham's fight against crime and corruption. "I think in hard times like [what Gotham is facing], the only thing that works to change things is a powerful, honorable leader," Gyllenhaal says, "And that is what this movie is about. It's about two different kinds of powerful honorable leaders. And it sort of follows one way, but using the system could work which is sort of what Harvey Dent is doing and this kind of more radical thing which is what Batman is doing, and I think he thinks it's just such a mess, just so corrupt in Gotham that he has to smash things open and he has to sort of do things a different way in order to change things. But it is about changing things, it's about trying to make things better in a world that is corrupt. And that's what I think the most honorable thing to do is. I wish I were willing to do more to sacrifice in my own life, but I am doing the best I can I guess."

Gyllenhaal spends most of her time these days with her daughter Ramona with boyfriend Peter Sarsgaard: Ramona's a year and a half old now, but only seven months old when Gyllenhaal began filming The Dark Knight. A flexible schedule was what ultimately convinced her she could handle the role.

"This was kind of a great job for a new mother," she says, "because I worked a couple days, had a week off, worked half a day, had two weeks off' I was not looking to work when this movie came along, she was three months old when I met Chris and I did everything I could to say no. I said, well, I only want to do it if [Rachel] can be really awesome: really smart and really feisty, and have a great mind. And he would say to everything, great, that sounds great!"

Handling the film and her new baby apparently worked like a charm, because it left her fully prepared to take on more work. "You see women who don't go back to work at all," she says. "But for me, I have felt in the last few months incredibly inspired, like I really want to work. I feel really like I have something new to say, having spent this time with my daughter. I'm just looking for the right thing to say it in I guess."

She may have found it in the comedy Farlanders -- directed by Sam Mendes and written by author Dave Eggers, it's about a couple who travel the country searching for the perfect home to raise their almost-due baby. Except Gyllenhaal doesn't play the pregnant wife. "I play this woman who is a mother who is kind of a hippie mom," she says with a wild grin. "She's into attachment parenting: still nursing her four-year-old, everyone is in a family bed, and everyone sleeps together every night. It's really funny."

Nicole Kolinski contributed to this article.