Peter Sarsgaard: Sarsgaard Unedited

Q: When Wang originally conceived that project, didn't he want his lead actors to actually have sex on screen?

A: Yeah, we said no fucking way! Molly had a boyfriend at the time. I had a girlfriend at the time. So that just wasn't going to happen. See, to me, that takes me out of the reality. If I'm watching the movie, I go, "These two actors are really having sex." Which is not what you want the audience to be thinking about.

Q: So, you have another nude scene in Kinsey. Do you have a love scene with Liam Neeson?

A: Mm-hmm.

Q: Do you make out with him?

A: [Smiles] You'll have to see. You'll have to see.

Q: And you're playing a real-life person again.

A: Clyde Martin was Kinsey's research assistant, gardener, a guy that he helped out and took care of and nurtured who was a student at the school. Clyde was having a little trouble getting through school financially, and Kinsey would do things like let him borrow his car to go out on dates; he ended up having an affair with Kinsey and his wife and got married, also. I play a bisexual person. They were living the life that they were preaching, but it got more complicated than that.

Q: What about In God's Hands?

A: [Cringing] In God's Hands had irreversible negative damage. The whole film was scrapped. We shot it for eight weeks.

Q: What happened?

A: It's too painful to talk about. I played a schizophrenic, and it was a very difficult thing. I worked on it for a long time.

Q: Is it something that you would do over?

A: I don't think so. They talk about it, but I think you can't really do a film twice. There's just no way to go back and do it scene by scene and, oh yeah, last time it was like this. It would be too much of a mindfuck.

Q: How did you meet Maggie Gyllenhaal?

A: At a dinner about two and a half years ago.

Q: It's funny, because you've both done these independent films that explore kinky sex, you with Center of the World and she with Secretary.

A: It's what's happening right now. A lot of smaller, independent films, in order to be seen, have to do something that's groundbreaking, right? And because America is pathologically uptight about sexuality, it's the obvious way to get noticed as a film, and it's marketable. Mark Ruffalo also has done some sexual stuff in movies, but I think it's not something about Mark Ruffalo or me or Maggie or even Chloë Sevigny [in The Brown Bunny]. It's because that's the way these small movies try to get recognized and we're working in that community.

Q: You've played a murderer, a drug addict, a John, a con man...

A: I just pick the best roles that are left over, and they usually aren't the heterosexual, leading-man, non-drug-addict parts. And then once you get into doing them, people know you do them.

Q: You've now worked with two Star Wars leading men, Hayden Christensen and Liam Neeson. So, are you ready to do that kind of big, special-effects-heavy, sci-fi blockbuster?

A: [Laughs] If they paid me enough.

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