Maggie Gyllenhaal

Maggie Gyllenhaal, 24, could easily pick up well-paying acting gigs in big-studio teen flicks. Instead, this Columbia graduate--whose mother Is screenwriter Naomi Foner, father is director Stephen Gyllenhaal and brother is actor Jake Gyllenhaal--is looking for more off-center parts.

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She's earning raves for her starring role as an S&M-dabbler in the Sundance hit Secretary, and though she has smaller roles in Adaptation and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind --both scripted by Being John Malkovich's intriguingly out-there Charlie Kaufman--she'll return to leading-lady status with the John Sayles drama Casa de los Babys.

Q: Your research for Secretary must have been, er, interesting.

A: The books that the director, Steve Shainberg, gave me didn't help much. In the end, I realized that everybody--no matter what they're into sexually--wants to be overwhelmed, and wants to overwhelm.

Q: What was it like working with Nicolas Cage on Adaptation?

A: He sometimes would just go off on these crazy roads in the middle of a scene, and I would just jump on the boat with him. He would pick up my foot and use it as a phone--things like that.

Q: Will we ever see you in, say, Men in Black III?

A: Hollywood right now is really focused on movies that will appeal to tons and tons of people by being kind of benign, but I think there's a way to appeal to tons and tons of people by being astounding, [Laughs] And I would love to be in a movie like that!

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Lonny Pugh