Margalit Ruth Gyllenhaal was born on 16 November 1977, in New York City, USA, of Swedish, English, and Jewish ancestry. She is an actress best known for her roles in films like “Secretary”, “Sherrybaby” and “The Dark Knight”. She’s also known as the daughter of filmmakers Naomi Achs and Stephen Gyllenhaal, and is also the brother of actor Jake Gyllenhaal.
How rich is Maggie Gyllenhaal? As of early-2016, sources estimate that her net worth is at $15 million, mostly earned through a successful career as an actress. She’s starred in over 25 films in the span of her acting career of over 20 years. She’s done film, television and recently Broadway, all of which have helped raise and maintain her net worth.
Maggie Gyllenhaal Net Worth $15 Million
Maggie grew up in Los Angeles, where she would graduate from Harvard-Westlake prep school before attending Columbia University, where she studied Literature and Eastern religions. At the young age of 15, she was already a part of various film productions that were handled by her father, starring in films like “A Dangerous Woman” and “Homegrown” during her late teens alongside her brother Jake. After graduating from college, she found recognition in the indie film “Donnie Darko” playing as her real brother’s on screen sister. Around this time she also started to act in theatre productions, including Patrick Marbel’s “Closer”, and “The Tempest”. She found her break-out role in the comedy “Secretary”, a film about two people who explore the BDSM lifestyle, which received favorable reviews and was nominated for a Golden Globe partly thanks to her performance, and earned her the Best Breakthrough Performance by an Actress from the National Board Review of Motion Pictures as well as an Independent Spirit Award nomination. She continued to star in popular films which included “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”, “40 Days and 40 Nights”, and “Mona Lisa Smile”. In the various films she’s worked on, she starred with Julia Roberts, George Clooney, and Drew Barrymore. She also made a few indie and television films during this period.
Gyllenhaal continued to work in films, earning recognition for her performances in “Stranger than Fiction”, and “World Trade Center”. For her performance in “Sherrybaby”, she received another Golden Globe nomination as well as the Best Actress Award during the 2006 Stockholm International Film Festival. One of her most successful films was “The Dark Knight” a film that earned $1 billion in revenue. In her most recent works, she’s starred in films like “Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang”, and “White House Down”.
Aside from her acting career, Maggie has been active both in politics and in philanthropy. She’s spoken out about issues like the Iraq War and the September 11 attacks. She’s also supported candidates in election times, including now President Barack Obama during his 2008 election run. She’s helped various organizations like Witness, which aims to expose and end human rights violations. She’s also been an ambassador for the “Hear the World Foundation” which advocates employment opportunities for individuals with hearing loss.
For her personal life, Maggie started a relationship with actor Peter Sarsgaard in 2002 and they married in 2009. The couple have two daughters and live in Brooklyn, New York.
I just participated in the [TV] program "Finding Your Roots," so I have a very accurate and informed family history. On my mom's side, it was exactly what I thought. They were peasants in Russia, and when my great-grandfather was drafted into the Russian army, which was a dangerous thing for a Jew, they left. First they went to Lithuania, then they came [to New York City] and lived on the Lower East Side, where my great-grandfather was a tailor... So I grew up mostly Jewish, culturally. How I eat, a lot of the way I think, comes from my mother.
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In terms of sexuality in film, I'm really interested in that. I think it's a really interesting element to storytelling. I think nudity is interesting, and I know that there are many actors and actresses who feel that it's just a part of their work. But I'm kind of compelled by it-when it's done well. So often, it's done in a way that's maybe not all that sexy or maybe trying to sort of fit into a fantasy of what people look like, and I'm not as interested in that. But nudity and sexuality that express something about the story you're telling, you just can't take your eyes off if it. The scene that comes to mind is in Rust and Bone (2012). Remember that scene where you can see Marion Cotillard's breast and [Matthias Schoenaerts] is kind of like staring at her? And it's so gorgeous. And you can't take your eyes off it. I don't have a problem with it at all. I know that there are also people who are asked to just get naked and there's not much else to do in the scene, and I think I might have a problem with that. But I think it can be a very interesting element to tell a story, especially on film.
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[on her view of the Israeli-Palestininian conflict] What I've been doing is trying to read as much as I can and to think and feel each day what my position is..At the moment, I feel like the show I made ['The Honorable Woman'] ...does articulate beautifully so many things I feel, and I'm trying to keep my personal politics out of the press. I do believe in the possibility of reconciliation.
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I almost never have me time. That's the truth. When I have a morning to myself, I'll get a manicure or a bikini wax or I'll try to exercise. If I can go for a run, it changes my whole life!
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Once you're a mom, there are secret things you know - like in your pocket, you'll find a bag of Cheerios.
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(Comments at the Tribeca premiere about The Great New Wonderful (2005)) I think America has done reprehensible things and is responsible in some way and so I think the delicacy with which it's dealt [in the film] allows that to sort of creep in.
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When I started making movies, I didn't care if anybody saw them. And now I realize I don't want to make movies for the ten people that feel the same way about the world that I do! I want to make movies that people see.
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I am looking for movies that are actually about something and that are questioning something. Movies that are provocative in some way and I am also looking for roles that I think will force me to grow or learn something about myself or the world in order to play them well.
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I do see things sometimes that are good, but they don't feel like a challenge to me personally. Like, in my own life and so often I think the things that excite me are things that feel a little bit beyond my grasp.
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I don't think it is the narrative necessarily that is the most important thing I think it is the human interaction that is the most important thing.
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I just want to support these films and be a part of them in any way because they are so provocative and interesting.
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There are two ways to be cool: One is to be disinterested and make it seem like you must be doing something much more interesting than everybody else if you are this disinterested. The other is to be extremely interested. You are not trying to please anyone, but you are really invested are really focused.
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(referring to when she started acting) "Even in elementary school, I took it really seriously. I was always doing plays."
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(On her new film Strip Search (2004)) "I think it's important to see. It's a real violation, and it forces people to get emotionally involved in something that's intellectual and political".
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(About being the youngest actress on her film Casa de los babys (2003)) "I felt out of place and not listened to".
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I didn't act the way little kids do, I threw my whole self into it.
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(On doing Homebody/Kabul) "To get people emotionally involved in something intellectual and political is important."
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(While promoting Mona Lisa Smile (2003)) "I've realised that the only way to make movies that you're proud of, that don't fall into the sentimental bullshit that so many movies fall into, is to fight. You have to fight. So many people are willing to sleepwalk through things and fall into the not human, not interesting choice".
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I want roles that challenge people to question where they are in life.
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There is a need, especially right now in America, to be a bit provocative.
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I really hated charm school. I guess I'm just a little bit bad.
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These past couple of years have been about learning to not sabotage myself in a subtler way - for instance, even just by putting moisturiser on when I get out of the shower. Learning to honour myself and believing that I'm worth taking care of.
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With everything I work on, I want to be put in a position that I have to be brave to do the project.
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Someone asked me why I didn't do teen movies or action movies, but I'm not interested in them.
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You're invited to tons of parties, and you'll wear these shoes and that dress, and it can be enticing, but I think it also sucks you dry. If you do it a little, sure, it's fun, but too much and you start to lose your footing.
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I find myself more and more interested only in roles which move the world forward.
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It's my responsibility to see what we can move and change about these old-school feminist mantras.
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I do seem to have a bit of a predilection for movies that say something transgressive.
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Fact
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In 2015, Maggie Gyllenhaal made headlines when, in an interview in The Wrap, she revealed that she had recently been told that she had been rejected for a role on the grounds that she was too old to play a love interest opposite a 55-year-old actor. Gyllenhaal was 37 at the time.
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In an interview with The Observer newspaper in July 2014, Maggie claimed she didn't know her real name until she was 35 years old: "I needed my birth certificate, and when my dad found it, it said that my name was Margolit. It was a bit of a shock. I'd always thought my full name was Margaret - never heard of Margolit. Neither of my parents can remember how it got on the birth certificate.".
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Lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter. [2010]
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Returned to work 4 months after giving birth to her daughter Gloria in order to begin filming White House Down (2013).
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Was 6 months pregnant with her daughter Gloria when she completed filming The Corrections (2012).
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Returned to work 6 months after giving birth to her daughter Ramona in order to begin filming The Dark Knight (2008).
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Gave birth to her 2nd child at age 34, a daughter Gloria Ray Sarsgaard on April 19, 2012. Child's father is her husband, Peter Sarsgaard.
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Gave birth to her 1st child at age 28, a daughter Ramona Sarsgaard on October 3, 2006. Child's father is her boyfriend [now husband], Peter Sarsgaard.
Was member of the dramatic jury at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004.
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Maggie's father has English, Swedish, Swiss-German, German, and distant Welsh and French, ancestry. Maggie's mother's family is Jewish (from Poland and Latvia).
She and brother, Jake Gyllenhaal, attended Camp Walt Whitman, an outdoors summer camp in Western New Hampshire.
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Met her fiancé at a dinner party.
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Ranked as #58 in FHM's "100 Sexiest Women in the World 2005" special supplement. (2005)
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Graduated Harvard-Westlake (private) high school in North Hollywood, California.
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Her mother is good friends, and was once the mentor of, Laurie Collyer who wrote Sherrybaby (2006) (aka "Shall Not Want"), in which Maggie stars.
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Was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) after the 2004 Academy Awards.
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Her mother is a Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated scriptwriter. Her father is an Emmy-nominated director, her grandmother is a doctor and Eric Foner, her mother's first husband, is an acclaimed historian at Columbia, the college she attended.
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Was born in New York City but grew up in Los Angeles where she and her brother attended the prestigious Harvard-Westlake prep school. Returned to New York when she was 17.