Biography

Peter Sarsgaard

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Overview

Born
March 7, 1971 · Belleville, Illinois, USA
Birth name
John Peter Sarsgaard
Height
5′ 11″ (1.80 m)

Mini bio

Boyish-looking Peter Sarsgaard was born on March 7, 1971, at Scott Air Force Base, in Bellville, Illinois, to Judy Lea (Reinhardt) and John Dale Sarsgaard, an engineer who worked for the Air Force and later Monsanto and IBM. He is a graduate of St. Louis' Washington University, where he majored in history and literature.

Initially trained with the Actors' Studio in New York, Peter began in comedy and became a co-founder of the comedy improvisational group Mama's Pot Roast. Such off-Broadway productions included Horton Foote's "Laura Dennis" and John Cameron Mitchell's "Kingdom of Earth."

He made his screen debut in Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking (1995) and was given more sizable roles in Desert Blue (1998) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), as the ill-fated son of the Musketeer Athos, played by John Malkovich. Peter then started gracing the art-house circuit, making a violent, searing impression as a homophobic killer in Boys Don't Cry (1999) starring two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank as a trans-gendered teen.

Other impressionable offbeat roles for Peter that have thrilled critics from coast to coast include Shattered Glass (2003), which earned him a slew of awards including the prestigious National Society of Film Critics Award. Prior to that, he showed off his versatility with portrayals ranging from a Russian nuclear reactor officer in K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) to a drug addict in The Salton Sea (2002). Other heralded performances include Garden State (2004) and, notably, Kinsey (2004).

On TV, Peter appeared in recurring/regular roles in several critically applauded series and mini-series including The Killing (2011), The Slap (2015), Wormwood (2017) (as ill-fated Army scientist Frank Olson), The Looming Tower (2018) and Running Naked in the Universe (2019). More recent films include Knight and Day (2010), the villain in the DC Comics entry Green Lantern (2011), the Woody Allen drama Blue Jasmine (2013), Experimenter (2015), Jackie (2016) (as Bobby Kennedy), The Magnificent Seven (2016), Loving Pablo (2017), The Sound of Silence (2019) and Human Capital (2019).

In 2009, Sarsgaard married actress Maggie Gyllenhaal and have two children. He co-starred in the movie she wrote and directed -- The Lost Daughter (2021) starring Olivia Colman.
- IMDb mini biography by: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Family

Spouse
Children
Parents

Trademarks

Often takes supporting roles instead of headlining a picture, whereby his character is friend to the main character in the film (Kinsey (2004), Shattered Glass (2003), Garden State (2004), Jarhead (2005)).

Trivia

Brother-in-law of Jake Gyllenhaal.
Is an avid runner. Runs 50 to 60 miles per week.
Became a father for the first time at age 35 when his fiancée (now wife) Maggie Gyllenhaal gave birth to their daughter Ramona Sarsgaard on 3 October 2006.
Admits to having a lifelong fear of flying.
Engaged to Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Quotes

"I just pick the best roles that are left over, and they usually aren't the heterosexual, leading-man, non-drug-addict parts. And once you get into doing them, people know you do them." - On his wide range of offbeat parts.
If you go in and audition for roles rather than just be offered them, then you kind of get a chance to kind of discover that you can do something that you didn't think you could do.
When you don't have power, which I still don't in the grand Hollywood scheme of things, you get offered things that you wouldn't ordinarily be offered. Frequently, other people know what I can do more than I do.
On his role as a marine in Jarhead (2005): There's a quality my character has about not caving in to the physical or mental demands of your job. I really took that to heart. A lot of my relatives have served, and I have respect for what it means to be a soldier. These guys are carrying a very heavy burden. We joke about marines being strict and severe, but would you want a bunch of hippies running around with guns?.
When people say, 'The movie sucked, but you didn't'; that means you didn't swing hard enough. You bunted. If the movie goes down, I want to go down with it.