Peter Sarsgaard on ‘September 5’ & ‘Presumed Innocent

Peter Sarsgaard, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast — which was recorded in front of an audience at the Newport Beach Film Festival, where Sarsgaard was honored with the Film Performance of the Year Award — is a remarkable character actor who is enjoying the biggest year of his career. He shines in both the new Paramount film September 5, playing Roone Arledge as ABC Sports covers 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attack, and on the new Apple TV+ drama series Presumed Innocent, as a prosecutor tasked with convicting a former colleague of a murder.

The 53-year-old, who has a distinctive voice and sleepy-eyed gaze, has been acting professionally on the stage and screens big and small for 30 years. Early in his career, it was fashionable to describe him with sort of backhanded compliments — for instance, the New York Times noted in 2004 that he has a “tendency to turn minor roles into major performances,” while Rolling Stone in 2005 called him “the best second banana in the business.” More recently, though, given his consistently strong work in roles and projects of all sizes, pretty much everyone has gotten on the same page as the AP, which in 2015 called him simply “one of the best of his generation.”

Over the course of this conversation, the actor reflects on his accidental path to acting; early breakthrough roles in films such as Dead Man Walking (1995), Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and Shattered Glass (2003), for which he received a Golden Globe nom; being directed by his wife, Maggie Gyllenhaal, on The Lost Daughter (2021), and working with his brother-in-law, Jake Gyllenhaal, on Jarhead (2005), Rendition (2007) and Presumed Innocent; and the evolution of some of the more acclaimed films of which he was a part, including Kinsey (2004), for which he received a Critics Choice nom, An Education (2009), which was nominated for the best picture Oscar, and Memory (2023), which brought him the Venice Film Festival’s best actor prize.

He also discusses the popcorn movies he has done, such as Green Lantern (2011) and The Batman (2022); sharing the screen with amazing Oscar-winning actresses in Blue Jasmine (2013), with Cate Blanchett, Jackie (2016), with Natalie Portman, and Memory, with Jessica Chastain; moving into longform TV on Hulu’s The Looming Tower (2018), for which he received a Critics Choice nom, and Dopesick (2021), for which he received an Emmy nom, en route to Presumed Innocent; why he is particularly proud of September 5; plus more.