In movies like “Flightplan,” “Skeleton Key” and “Jarhead,” Peter Sarsgaard has gravitated towards characters straddling the conventional lines of morality - soon, in “Rendition”, he’ll do it again as a Senate aide torn between defense and decency.
Next up for Sarsgaard? Two more morally ambiguous movies, both based on novels.
“I did this movie with Tommy Lee Jones called ‘In the Electric Mist,’ directed by this French cat Bertrand Tavernier,” Sarsgaard said of the veteran French filmmaker, who’ll make his American debut with the drama about an actor embroiled in a murder mystery. “It’s based off a James Lee Burke novel called ‘In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead.’”
You might be wondering why Hollywood shortened the book title - then again, you’re not the one who has to post “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” on a thousand theater marquees. “Electric” tells the tale of a detective (Jones) who forms an unlikely partnership with Sarsgaard’s actor, teaming up to resurrect a decades-old murder mystery.
“It’s difficult to describe,” Sarsgaard shrugged. “It’s better to see.” Early next year, we’ll do just that.
“Then a movie I made with Ben Kingsley that’s directed by Isabel Coixet, and that’s based off a Philip Roth novel,” Mr. Maggie Gyllenhaal told us. “The name of that movie is ‘Elegy.’”
Returning to the off-putting exploration of illicit eros that he recently plumbed in “Kinsey,” Sarsgaard will once again bring sexy back - this time, however, he’ll add a “g” and an “l” and have Kingsley as the professor. “It’s based off the novel ‘The Dying Animal,’” Sarsgaard said about the tale of an affair between a college professor and a graduate student (Penelope Cruz). “And yeah, that’s it for now. It’s been a baby year.”
Although he’s currently busy playing the morally-upright father role opposite his fiancée, Sarsgaard assures fans that plenty more ethical-tightrope-walkers are on the way.
“I don’t see the world in terms of good and bad, or black and white,” he explained. “I think when you play a character that’s right on that line of trying to figure out he could go either way, well, then you’re learning about the issues yourself.”
