Maggie Gyllenhaal Says She and Brother Jake Gyllenhaal Have 'Never Been as Close as We Are Now'
Maggie Gyllenhaal Says She and Brother Jake Gyllenhaal Have 'Never Been as Close as We Are Now'
Tommy McArdleTue, March 3, 2026 at 3:48 PM UTC
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Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal on March 27, 2022Credit: Dan Steinberg/Variety/Penske Media via Getty -
Maggie Gyllenhaal said she and brother Jake Gyllenhaal have grown more close as siblings in recent years
Jake appears in Maggie's new movie as a director The Bride!, marking the first time the two have worked together since their breakout 2001 hit Donnie Darko
The Bride! is in theaters March 6
Maggie Gyllenhaal is sharing some insight into her relationship with brother Jake Gyllenhaal just before the pair's new movie The Bride! debuts in theaters.
Maggie, 48, appeared on The New York Times' podcast The Interview on Saturday, Feb. 28 to discuss her new movie as a director, which Jake, 45, appears in alongside Maggie's husband Peter Sarsgaard and also stars Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale. After Maggie noted that asking Jake to act in a movie she wrote and directed proved an emotional experience for her, she said that she has "in the past, had to sort of be separate from my family, from my brother."
"Like, cool, I’ve got my own thing going. I think I did have to do that. I mean, we both started so young," Maggie said of her and Jake's careers. "I think it was just a really honest, vulnerable, what’s underneath rage, reaching out. Just basically saying, I want to interact, and I know that this is a place where we can do it. I’m not asking him to do something that he can’t do. I’m making an offer, which is a generous thing to do."
She also added that she made the casting offer "with love" in a follow-up comment.
The Interview host Lulu Garcia-Navarro then asked Maggie whether she and Jake "have been estranged," to which the writer-director answered, "No, no, we’ve never been estranged, but we’ve never been as close as we are now. We’re finally, maybe in the last five years, more and more and more, even each day, really interacting, which is hard for people to do."
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal at the 2001 Sundance Film FestivalCredit: J. Vespa/WireImage
Jake and Maggie came from a filmmaking family: their father Stephen, 76, has worked as a television and film director since the 1980s, while their mother Naomi, 79, was nominated for an Oscar in 1989 for writing the movie Running on Empty. Naomi and Stephen were married in 1977 and finalized their divorce in 2009, years after Maggie and Jake began acting as teenagers in the '90s and broke out when they portrayed onscreen siblings in 2001's Donnie Darko.
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In The Bride!, Jake portrays an actor named Ronnie Reed, who runs into Buckley's title character and Bale's portrayal of Frankenstein's monster (called Frank in the movie) in the chaos that emerges after Frank helps create a companion for himself from an undead woman.
"I waited until I was absolutely sure that asking him to do this part — it's a pretty small part, it's just a cameo, really — I made sure, I really did some work and thinking to make sure it was the right thing to do, to ask him," Maggie said of recruiting Jake for the movie on the podcast.
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Christian Bale and Jake Gyllenhaal in The Bride!Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
"I remember asking him and tearing up . . . just alone in this hotel room I was in, because it meant so much to me. It meant so much for me to interact with him," she added.
The Bride! also stars Penélope Cruz, Julianne Hough, John Magaro and Annette Bening. The movie is in theaters March 6.
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