Who

The scruffy-faced Brooklyn actor is known for playing killers, sociopaths, and assorted other crazies, and for being married to Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Backstory

Sarsgaard grew up on an Air Force base in Illinois, and co-founded an improv comedy troupe in college called Mama's Pot Roast. His first screen role was a tiny part on Law & Order in 1995, the same year he made his movie debut as a murder victim in Dead Man Walking. His breakout role came in 1999 when he played the killer of Hilary Swank's character in Boys Don't Cry. Since then Sarsgaard's become an indie staple, having portrayed a lonely millionaire in 2001's Center of the World, Hayden Christensen's editor in 2003's Shattered Glass, Zach Braff's BFF in Garden State, and Liam Neeson's disciple-slash-lover in 2004's Kinsey. In between movie roles, he's popped up occasionally on the off-Broadway theater circuit, starring opposite Cynthia Nixon in a 1996 John Cameron Mitchell-directed play called Kingdom of Earth, and with Elisabeth Shue in the 2002 drama Burn This.

Upcoming

This year, Sarsgaard will appear opposite Nick Nolte and Sienna Miller in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, an adaptation of the Michael Chabon novel of the same name; and Elegy, an adaptation of Philip Roth's The Dying Animal.

Personal

After dating for about four years, Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal got hitched in April 2006. In October of that year Gyllenhaal gave birth to the couple's first child, Ramona. (The child's hyphenated last name should prove a spelling nightmare when she starts Montessori school.) But don't let his low-key indie star domesticity fool you: Pre-Gyllenhaal, he was known for being a ladies' man and huge jerk. Sarsgaard was involved with burlesque queen Dita von Teese until she found out that he'd cheated on her with model Shalom Harlow. The Canadian beauty later found out that he'd cheated on her, too.

Habitat

In the fall of 2006—right about the time little Ramona was born—the Sarsgaard-Gyllenhaals bought a four-story, $1.75 million brownstone in hipster parent mecca Park Slope. The vintage abode has seven marble-mantled fireplaces.

No joke

Sarsgaard's penis makes cameos in both The Center of the World and Kinsey.