Maggie Gyllenhaal put off her dreams of directing for years because she didn’t feel she was “entitled” to step behind the camera.
The actress has recently been adding producing credits to her name with episodes of her show The Deuce and Netflix film The Kindergarten Teacher, and she’s now planning on tackling directing too – a move she says she should have made sooner.
“Absolutely. I’m not proud of this, I wish this were different, but I didn’t feel entitled to direct, in a way that maybe 100 years ago, if you were a medical-minded woman you might set your sights on being a nurse,” she sighed to Deadline.
“Even 20 years ago, when I was getting out of college I was like, ‘I’m going to be a storyteller. I’m going to be an actress.’ But there wasn’t really… Of course, there were exceptions. There were incredible women filmmakers, but it didn’t seem like an obvious choice. It’s only recently that I really felt like it was something I could do. Yeah, I do think it might have happened sooner.”
She added that her move into producing was a natural one, as she had so many ideas for her projects.
Maggie’s directorial debut looks set to be an adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel The Lost Daughter, a project the 41-year-old is also writing.
“Well, the adaptation I’m almost finished with,” she smiled. “I don’t know if you really call it a first draft any more. I’ve had a couple of really helpful readers already and I’m almost there.
“It has been the greatest pleasure. I know that that’s not often the experience of writers. My mom is a screenwriter and growing up, I had watched my mother have to force herself to have a discipline to sit down and write, and that’s not my experience to be honest.”
