Happy Birthday: Peter Sarsgaard

Peter Sarsgaard

Born: March 7, 1971 in Belleville, Illinois, USA

Married to: Maggie Gyllenhaal (2 May 2009 – present) (2 children)

I’m very much against the death penalty. It’s very easy to do a piece about someone who’s been railroaded by the system, who’s innocent. If you don’t believe in the death penalty, you have to take an extreme circumstance – someone who’s indefensible – to see if it still applies. Otherwise the death penalty applies in some cases.

[on Sean Penn taking him out to dinner during the making of his first film, Dead Man Walking (1995)] It was a sort of I’m-going-to-rape-you-and-we-should-get-to-know-one-another meal. I thought that was nice, and I’ve tried to extend the same courtesy to my co-stars, especially if I’m going to kill or rape them.

In my first scene in any movie ever, Sean Penn dragged me out to a swamp, threw me down in the mud, raped and killed me and my girlfriend. We did the scene, we took a shower, put on new clothes and did the scene again. All night long. And that was my big break.

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