Whether she is picking her candidate for the Presidential election because she thinks he is sexy, playing a woman just released from prison or kissing heart throb Diego Luna in her latest released film 'Criminal,' Maggie Gyllenhaal seems to have an intelligent opinion about most things, tempering that with a quiet introspection.
'Criminal' is a remake of the Argentine film 'Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens) and was written and directed by Gregory Jacobs. Gyllenhaal, does a great job in a plumb roll as Valerie the sister of a small time scam artist played by John C. Reilly.
From an entertainment family, Gyllenhaal's father is a well-known director, her mother an accomplished screenwriter and, as most people know, her brother Jake is popular in his own right.

Do you know anything about being a Scorpio or the characteristics of this sign?
MG –I don’t really know. I read the horoscope in the New York Press, but sort of like for fun. No, I don’t know much about that. Although, I just played someone who was a Scorpio in the last movie I just did.

Can you talk about that?
MG - It is a movie called “Shall Not Want” and I had little Scorpio flip-flop in that movie. I play a woman who just got out of prison and she has a five-year-old daughter. It is about me re-entering the world after having been in prison for two years and trying to make a relationship with my daughter. I think that movie might be really good and I really hope so. It was a really good experience.

Can you tell us about the roles you have done in the other two movies, “Happy Endings” and “Great New Wonderful.”
MG - I think they are going to be really good movies. The one has tons of great people in it, Tom Arnold, Laura Dern and Lisa Kudrow. I am sure I am forgetting people, but I play a singer in it and I have sort of a strange love triangle. In “Great New Wonderful” I play a cake decorator who decorates $15,000 cakes in New York. I have a life crisis, breakdown and begin to wonder what am I doing with my life kind of thing. All of those three movies I made in the last couple of months and I am really excited. They were all really interesting projects. Small and independent things, but worth it.

What are you looking for in your roles in movies?
MG – What am I looking for?

You are very selective and you don’t do a lot of films, you are very choosy?
MG – Yeah, I am I think. 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. 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.

What did you learn in “Criminal?
MG – It is funny, sometimes I can’t put my finger on why I decided to do this movie or what particularly excited me in a way that I think I often can about some of the other movies that I have chosen. This one, I think I was interested in the idea. Like the classic girl in the con movie, 1940s/1970s type of thing. The sort of femme fatale fantasy thing, which does interest me and I like that. The lipstick and the high heels and the whole thing, but what interested me in this woman is that she is performing that and I don’t think she is always performing it well. That was an interesting twist to me, somebody who was trying to be something that she wasn’t exactly and doing it for reasons that were emotional. Often I think in con movies or heist movies it is all about money and in this movie I think it is all about money for one person, and for most of the other people in the movie it is about something else and something emotional. Yeah, I guess that is what drew me to it. Although the idea of lying, which is something I have a really hard time with in my life, I am not interested in lying at all. My resistance to that also comes to me as an interest in it.

Did you get to see the Argentine version of the film?
MG – You know, I did not see it. I first I didn’t see it intentionally, but I should see it now. I haven’t because I have been working and doing other things. I didn’t see it because I don’t think it is helpful for an actor. Also, somewhere along the line I just forgot that we were making a remake, which I think is okay. Not completely fair, because obviously it is based on another movie and I am not in anyway denying that, but we tell the same stories over and over again anyway in film and novels and all sorts of ways. 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. So, yeah, I just disassociated the fact that it was a remake of something and I didn’t pay any attention to it. I mean no disrespect to that movie and I will see it and should see it, but that is why I didn’t see it originally.

Since your family is involved in the business do you discuss projects - do you ask their opinion of scripts and how you are going to play a role?
MG - I think I have felt for along time that it was important for me to have my own...I think at a certain point you have to make a separation from your parents emotionally and that is the important thing to do. That happened to me years ago I think. But, it is also important when you parents are working in the same vein as you are working in to make an artistic separation from them. That also happened kind of a long time ago for me. So for awhile I used to feel like I had to put a really clear boundary down, I do not want to talk to them about my work and I do not want to involve them. Now, the older I get I feel more comfortable letting them be a part of it. The movie that I just did 'Shall Not Want' where I play the woman getting out of prison is a movie that was workshopped at the Sundance Institute and my mother was the screenwriting mentor to the woman who wrote it and that is how the project came to me. My mother who knows me said 'I think you are going to love this movie' and she is the reason I why I did it. She is the reason why it came to me. That is great and there is no reason to reject that.

Was she involved in that movie in any way?
MG - After that she really had very little to do with it [the movie]. Actually, I also called my dad recently after a particularly hard scene I did in that movie. Not for artistic advice, but almost for some comfort. It was a hard movie with really hard things going on all the time for the woman I was playing in it. Every once in awhile after a scene I would just call up someone who loved me and just want to talk to them. It actually helped to call Peter or to call my dad, a film director. They knew how complicated the process of having to actually live in these people can be. They knew that if I was upset, maybe I wasn't necessarily just Maggie upset I was sort of swallowed up in something else and they really knew how to talk to me. That can be really great.

You and your brother have been competitive in the past tell me about that now?
MG - I think it is less something that had to be resolved. Any two siblings who are young and feel competitive and play sometimes, but love each other and support each other and the older we get, like in most sibling relationships, we sort of feel like that is a waste of time and we love each other. My brother is one of my best friends.

You are often described as a fearless actress are you like that in your real life. You were saying that you never lie so you must be pretty brave if you don't lie.
MG - Am I fearless? No. I mean there are many things that scare me. I do think that in some ways I think that some of the work that I do, how do I explain it, I can be braver in the characters I am playing than I am in my life. The woman I just played in the movie I keep talking about, actually all of the three movies I just did, there were aspects of the people I was playing who were definitely braver than me and certainly in 'Happy Endings.' I was playing kind of... doing some things like I sleep with this guy and then I sleep with his father in 'Happy Endings' and it seems like a reasonable thing to do when I do it. I have no shame about it at all in the movie and I think it is something that I am doing to help me, to help them, to open our lives up. I think that is something as me, as Maggie, that I would have to search really hard and deep inside myself to find the wisdom to see how that could be okay. It is easy to see how it is not okay and much braver to see how it could be okay, much wiser. I think I get to be braver in the work that I do sometimes than I am in my life. Maybe I can take some cue from that and learn a little bit of it in my life.

In this movie you get to share a kiss with the young actor, Diego Luna, what was it like to kiss him?
MG - This is funny, but Diego seems like he could be a friend of my brothers. He is younger than me and a cutie pie. It actually wasn't like that hot thing, it was sort of more sweet and lovely and he was just adorable and really became a friend of mine onset and I liked him and he was an ally to me. So kissing him was sweet.

So you felt like the older woman?
MG - Yeah, I did.

Any comments on the Republican National Convention held in New York?
MG - I feel like it is sort of prideful in a way that I have a problem with that the Republicans can come and have their convention in New York. I wish I were there and I could have protested too. I was sort of stunned by how little coverage there was of the protests that were happening at the Olympics. I loved the Olympic games this year. I think the United States right now, whether we like it or not, is an incredibly powerful country. It is a world power and if we don't have someone running the country who is incredibly responsible and has a real sense of diplomacy then the entire world is going to fall apart. So far I do not feel that George Bush has given any indication that he can handle that kind of responsibility. Also, I just think John Kerry is so, I find him very sexy, I think he should be president.