Image Credit: Dale Robinette
Peter Sarsgaard is accustomed to playing unsavory characters, but the role of Linda Lovelace’s abusive husband in Lovelace, which premiered last night at the Sundance Film Festival, almost stopped him in his tracks. Chuck Traynor masterminded his wife’s pornography career and years after Deep Throat, Lovelace would accuse him of beating her and threatening to kill her if she ever tried to leave him or the sordid business that made her famous. “Being in the place where I am in my life, the role just wasn’t appealing,” says Sarsgaard, whose wife Maggie Gyllenhaal was pregnant with their second daughter when he was weighing the decision. “At the same time, I was having trouble saying no, so there’s obviously some part of me that is attracted to it.”
Moping around his house, he took forever to read the script — to the point that the filmmakers were reluctantly about to seek a Plan B. Finally, his pregnant wife stepped in. “Basically, you’ve been thinking about it for too long,” Sarsgaard says she told him. “That means you should do it.”
“Thank god for her,” says Amanda Seyfried, who plays the beautiful but battered Lovelace in the film. “Because honestly, he’s the best actor of our generation and I got to work with him. I can’t believe it still.” READ FULL STORY »
