This is kind of a weird interview to link to

...being as I've seen almost none of Maggie Gyllenhaal's films since Cecil B. Demented, in which I don't remember her.

Really the most I know about her is that she is rather sexy in photographs and that her brother Jake is also an actor. With whose work I'm approximately as familiar. She also impressed me on an episode of the IFC's Dinner For Five, a show I really like.

It's kind of the way you (or me, anyway) wish all talk shows could be but 99-98% of them aren't. I enjoy Craig, Jay, Dave and Conan at various times and to varying degrees but only rarely do they actually engage their guests in conversation. They are putting on a show. They know it, the guests know it, the audience knows it.

What makes Dinner For Five one of the best is simply that it is so simple: Host Jon Farveau invites four guests from the world of filmmaking (actors, directors, what have you, even--gasp!--the odd writer or two) and dines with them while exploring their unique and common experiences. Cameras film all this and the highlights are edited down into a half-hour show. Ba-da-boom.

Anyway, on her guest appearance (here is video from that appearance), Gyllenhaal impressed me as an actress who passes the "15 minutes" test.

For those of you who may have forgotten, this means I think I could spend more than 15 minutes talking to her without only thinking about how to get her kit off.

So, after a prelude (that was much longer than I expected it to be when I started writing this), here is the interview that sparked it all, and here's just a couple of the things she had to say:

Most people in the world are interested in seeing 27 year old women in movies somehow connected to sex, especially little movies that have trouble getting made.

When I first started I thought “I’m making these movies for me.” I didn’t care if people saw it. I was younger so I had a different point of view about it. Now I do want people to see my movies, I make them because I believe in what they have to say and I want to have some effect on the way the world works in whatever way I can. I also want to have the power to help get the movies that I think are important made.