Peter Sarsgaard on Researching His Role: Each of the characters in “Jarhead” is based on a real person, but Sarsgaard said he never did any research on the guy he plays in the film prior to playing the part.
“When you're not playing Nixon and everyone doesn't know a lot about them, or Ray Charles and everyone doesn't know a lot about them, the best way to honor them, I've found, is to just honor myself and only do things that I would feel comfortable doing and trust in the common experience of being human. I didn't want to go find that family and dig up that stuff for them. It's going to be enough for them seeing this movie anyway, so let them be. It doesn't really matter anyway. He's only in a small portion of the book. I read the book before I even knew I was cast, because Jake was doing it, so I read it just out of curiosity.
When I first got offered this part, there was no character there. There's nothing there and Sam said he knew that and he wanted to create one. So we created it together, through rehearsal, while filming. We didn't even know why the character needed to exist, exactly, but he knew that it needed to for some reason, although we were both incredibly inarticulate about it for a while. Then we just started to zero in on something, that this was a guy who had a past that he was avoiding. I know what my past was, but that's probably not important for you guys. When I became a Marine, I became the best Marine and to me that meant putting one foot in front of the other, never complaining, never letting other guys complain, just doing it and doing it well and being a killer and doing it right and efficiently.
I think that's why I have a nervous breakdown in the movie, because I'm suppressing all of this stuff for the entire movie. When I freak out in the movie, I'm not just freaking out over what I'm freaking out about, I'm freaking out that I'm having to leave the military. I'm freaking out over all that stuff. I don't have a world out there that is not a Marine. I like the way the movie ended up, because we explained a lot of the things that happened in the movie. We had reasons that were filmed and he took a lot of those reasons out, and I think it honors the character more.”
Peter Sarsgaard and Jake Gyllenhaal Test the Bounds of Their Friendship: Friends off-screen, and in fact Sarsgaard is in a long-term relationship with Gyllenhaal’s sister Maggie, the two went into “Jarhead” knowing the movie might take a toll on their relationship. Asked how they kept from killing each other during filming, Sarsgaard said, “You know, it's the greatest thing that ever happened to us, I've got to say. I mean, going in - I always tell this story - my aunt had my uncle once landscape her property and they didn't speak for a year after that. And I told Jake that before we started. I said, 'You know, if we're not careful, this could be very bad.'
We went through so many difficult times together and then so many good ones, it's like somehow when you have a hard time together, the make-up, it's like you're suddenly so much closer. So that's one of the most valuable things that came out of this movie, that Jake and I got a lot closer.”
