Peter Sarsgaard Wants You To Like Him, But Not the Ass He Plays on Broadway

To promote his upcoming role in Anton Chekhov's Seagull on Broadway (curtain call: tomorrow!), actor Peter Sarsgaard gave an interview to the Associated Press and asked that the reporter meet him in his Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. But he didn’t anticipate the hipsters crowding his favorite coffee house at the time of the interview.

"Peter Sarsgaard wants to meet in a coffee bar in Brooklyn, but balks when he gets there," writes Mark Kennedy. "It's crowded with 30-somethings in carefully rumpled hair, funky glasses, sleek laptops, expensive jeans and oh-so-cool graphic T-shirts. The flavor of the day seems to be smug," the reporter continues.

"It's too trendy in there for me," Sarsgaard tells him. It's a much better lead-in than "Sarsgaard appears to be in his natural environment in a room full of 30-somethings in carefully rumpled hair, funky glasses, sleek laptops, expensive jeans and oh-so-cool graphic T-shirts" would have been!

So, Mr. Sarsgaard does what broke Slopers have been doing for decades when they need a place to chill out: he takes the reporter to the front stoop of the brownstone he shares with spouse Maggie Gyllenhaal, proceeding to brag about his potted plants and waving to a neighbor walking by with a stroller.

But being liked by fans as Peter Sarsgaard apparently can get in the way of his characters. The night before the interview Mr. Sarsgaard traded in his American accent for a British one in Seagull in order to be "less liked by an American audience."

"It kind of creates an immediate connection between the character most likely to be hated and the audience," he said of his discarded American accent. "I feel like I immediately have a little leg up before I go down and beg for their sympathy."