Peter Sarsgaard

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Birthday:

7 March 1971, Belleville, Illinois, USA

Birth Name:

John Peter Sarsgaard

Height:

180 cm

Peter Sarsgaard was born at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, to Judy Lea (Reinhardt) and John Dale Sarsgaard, an engineer who worked for the Air Force and later Monsanto and IBM. He is a graduate of St. Louis' Washington University, where he majored in history and literature. He was a co-founder of the comedy improvisational group Mama's Pot Roast and trained initially with the Actors' Studio in New York. Such off-Broadway productions included Horton Foote's "Laura Dennis" and John Cameron Mitchell's "Kingdom of Earth."He made his screen debut in Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking (1995) and was given more sizable roles in Desert Blue (1998) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), as the ill-fated son of the Musketeer Athos, played by John Malkovich. Peter then started gracing the art-house circuit, making a violent, searing impression as a homophobic killer in Boys Don't Cry (1999) starring two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank as a trans-gendered teen.Other impressionable offbeat roles for Peter that have thrilled critics from coast to coast include Shattered Glass (2003), which earned him a slew of awards including the prestigious National Society of Film Critics Award. Prior to that, he showed off his versatility with portrayals ranging from a Russian nuclear reactor officer in K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) to a drug addict in The Salton Sea (2002). Other heralded performances in Garden State (2004) and Kinsey (2004) only prove that, at this rate, it is only a matter of time before the Oscars come rapping on Sarsgaard's door. Show less «

"I just pick the best roles that are left over, and they usually aren't the heterosexual, leading-man, non-drug-addict parts. And once you g...Show more »

"I just pick the best roles that are left over, and they usually aren't the heterosexual, leading-man, non-drug-addict parts. And once you get into doing them, people know you do them." - On his wide range of offbeat parts. Show less «

If you go in and audition for roles rather than just be offered them, then you kind of get a chance to kind of discover that you can do some...Show more »

If you go in and audition for roles rather than just be offered them, then you kind of get a chance to kind of discover that you can do something that you didn't think you could do. Show less «

When you don't have power, which I still don't in the grand Hollywood scheme of things, you get offered things that you wouldn't ordinarily ...Show more »

When you don't have power, which I still don't in the grand Hollywood scheme of things, you get offered things that you wouldn't ordinarily be offered. Frequently, other people know what I can do more than I do. Show less «

On his role as a marine in Jarhead (2005): There's a quality my character has about not caving in to the physical or mental demands of your ...Show more »

On his role as a marine in Jarhead (2005): There's a quality my character has about not caving in to the physical or mental demands of your job. I really took that to heart. A lot of my relatives have served, and I have respect for what it means to be a soldier. These guys are carrying a very heavy burden. We joke about marines being strict and severe, but would you want a bunch of hippies running around with guns?. Show less «

When people say, 'The movie sucked, but you didn't'; that means you didn't swing hard enough. You bunted. If the movie goes down, I want to ...Show more »

When people say, 'The movie sucked, but you didn't'; that means you didn't swing hard enough. You bunted. If the movie goes down, I want to go down with it. Show less «

Seriously, in Catholicism, you're supposed to love your enemy. That really impressed me as a kid, and it has helped me as an actor. I don't ...Show more »

Seriously, in Catholicism, you're supposed to love your enemy. That really impressed me as a kid, and it has helped me as an actor. I don't believe there are bad people. Just people who do bad things. The way that I view the characters I play is part of my religious upbringing. To abandon curiosity in all personalities, good or bad, is to give up hope in humanity. Like somebody who is mumbling on the street - I'm always curious if his words make any sense. I'm interested in lost souls. They possess another sort of secret. (Explaining how his religious upbringing influences his choices as an actor, 2005.) Show less «

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 ...Show more »

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. Show less «

[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-...Show more »

[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. Show less «

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. W...Show more »

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. Show less «