Maggie Gyllenhaal on the ‘Complicated’ Character That Won Her a Golden Globe

I think one of the things that’s happening with Nessa is that she’s going from being somebody who performs herself all the time and feels that she has to be extraordinary and remarkable, and pushes out the human flawed sides of herself to somebody who, you know, is actually a human being. And I think that’s part of what’s panicking her is you can’t live like that… Maybe it’s an occupational hazard of being an actor more than other people, but I think that that’s something that all human beings can relate to: performing themselves, thinking they’re supposed to be a kind of fantasy of what they imagined they were going to be when they were 20, you know, and then like — look, I’m 36. I feel like so much of my thirties has been having to — that performance just not working anymore. And so then you have two choices: either you can like slowly die, or you can come alive and be in the river and be a human being [Laughs] and like do the best you can.