Peter Sarsgaard: 'No Comic Book Villains for Me'

The world was going to get a lot less gray in just a few years. He's almost a precursor to a cultural revolution in London. How different would things have been if this were set then?

Oh, I think if it had been ten years later, they probably would have had a one-off and just walked away! [Laughs] The world got wiser. It was kind of an innocent time then, that's what's beautiful about the story. All of those characters -- Alfred Molina's character, Carey's character -- seem somehow fundamentally innocent. Even my character...he's not a cad. He doesn't have it in him to be a cad.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Also, this is something that Lone always laughs at, but I really don't believe what Sally Hawkins's character says about David. I think, "All right, a young girl comes up to her front porch, and what does she choose to tell her? That she's one of many. Well, the only reason to say that to someone is to make them feel bad and let them know that they mean nothing." When you have such a strong reason to say something, the accuracy of your statements is suspect. Politics is always like that. Of course you want to see it that way -- that's why you came up with the facts to match! I just don't believe her, and I actually didn't play it thinking that there was more than one Jenny. That doesn't mean there wasn't, it just might mean that I got so into his perspective that I lost that piece of information.

So much of what I worked on with this character was constructing a reality that was not reality. It was constructing his reality, his fantasy world, and it didn't include a lot of the givens of his life. There's one scene in it where I think I felt like I was James Bond or something, wearing sunglasses and a hat and getting out of the car in a certain way. It's like this character's shiftable and mutable; there's no center there with him. He's a complicated guy.

[SPOILER END]

What are you working on next? It's been a good year for you.

Yeah, I'm going to Boston in about a week to do Wichita. It's a great script; I'm the foil to Tom Cruise's character. It's really fun and it's got action movie stuff in it, obviously, but it's funny.

I've always thought it was sort of notable that you've never appeared in a sequel, franchise, or comic book movie. You've never had to sign a contract that came with a mandatory two more movies attached.

A franchise is either great or a golden handcuff.

Have you been offered them? I can tell by your face...

Yeah, I've faced situations where I thought, "This is gonna be a lot of time for not very much reward," or "The rewards in this are purely financial." It's OK for that to be the reason to do something, but then I start to look at time, and I go, "Oh, but it's three years of my life." If I were just to do something for money, I would make sure that it didn't take an enormous amount of time out of my life. So, yeah. No comic book villains for me.

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