Peter Sarsgaard

John Peter Sarsgaard (; born March 7, 1971) is an American actor. Sarsgaard studied at the Actors Studio before rising to prominence playing atypical and sometimes villainous roles in film and television. He made his film debut with Dead Man Walking (1995). He gained recognition for his role in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), Boys Don't Cry (1999), and The Center of the World (2001). For his portrayal of Charles Lane in Shattered Glass (2003), Sarsgaard received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination. Sarsgaard has acted in films such as Garden State, Kinsey (both 2004), Jarhead (2005), Elegy (2008), An Education (2009), Lovelace, Blue Jasmine (both 2013), Black Mass (2015), Jackie (2016), and The Lost Daughter (2021). He is also known for his performances in the blockbuster films Knight and Day (2010), Green Lantern (2011), The Magnificent Seven (2016), and The Batman (2022). For his performance in Memory (2023), Sarsgaard won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. Sarsgaard is also known for his television roles including in the AMC/Netflix crime series The Killing (2013) and the Hulu limited series The Looming Tower (2018) and Dopesick (2021), the latter of which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Sarsgaard made his Broadway debut portraying Boris Alexeyevich Trigorin in the revival of Anton Chekov's The Seagull (2008). He is married to Maggie Gyllenhaal. Early life and education John Peter Sarsgaard was born at Scott Air Force Base in St. Clair County, Illinois, on March 7, 1971, the son of Judy Lea (née Reinhardt) and John Dale Sarsgaard. His father was an Air Force engineer and later worked for Monsanto and IBM. His surname originates in Denmark, where his paternal great-great-grandparents were born; it is pronounced in Danish.