QUICK FACTS
Activity Actor
Real name John Peter Sarsgaard
Nationality USA
Born March 7, 1971 (Belleville, Illinois, USA)
BIOGRAPHY
John Peter Sarsgaard was born on March 7, 1971 in Belleville, Illinois, USA. He attended Bard College in New York for two years before transferring to Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) in 1991, where he co-founded a improv comedy troupe, Mama’s Pot Roast . While at WUSTL, Sarsgaard began acting in plays at a branch of the Actors Studio in New York.
He made his screen debut in Tim Robbins ‘ Death Penalty (1995) and went on to larger roles in Desert Blue (1998) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), as the ill-fated son of the musketeer Athos, played by John Malkovich. Peter then began to please the art circuit, making a searing, violent impression as a homophobic killer in Boys Don’t Cry (1999), starring two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank as a transgender teenager.
Other roles for Peter that have thrilled critics from coast to coast include Shattered Glass (2003), which earned him a number of awards, including the prestigious National Society of Film Critics Award. Before that, he showed off his versatility with portrayals ranging from a Russian nuclear reactor officer in K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) to a drug addict in The Salton Sea (2002). Other announced performances in Garden State (2004) and Kinsey (2004) only prove that, at this rate, it’s only a matter of time before the Oscars arrive at Sarsgaard’s doorstep.