Maggie Gyllenhaal — actress with roots in the Russian Empire
Margalit Ruth Gyllenhaal, known as Maggie, was born in Manhattan on 16 November 1977, the daughter of two filmmakers: the director Stephen Gyllenhaal, of a Swedish family, and the screenwriter Naomi Foner, born Naomi Achs. Her younger brother is the actor Jake Gyllenhaal. Her connection to the Russian Empire runs through her mother's family.
Naomi Achs was born in New York City in 1946 and grew up in Brooklyn, in an Ashkenazi Jewish family. According to her Wikipedia article, her grandparents emigrated from Eastern Europe, from Latvia and Poland; the article on Maggie Gyllenhaal gives Russia and Poland. Latvia, then made up of the Courland and Livonia governorates and part of Vitebsk, was in the Russian Empire, so the Latvian line places Maggie's great-grandparents there. Their names and towns are not recorded in published sources, and which part of Poland the other line came from is not documented.
She began as a teenager with small parts in her father's films; A Dangerous Woman (1993), directed by her father, was written by her mother. In 2001 she appeared with her brother in Donnie Darko. Her leading role in Secretary (2002) brought her first Golden Globe nomination, and Sherrybaby (2006), in which she played a woman just out of prison, a second. She took over the role of Rachel Dawes in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008), and as a single mother opposite Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart (2009) received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress.
On television she starred as Nessa Stein in the BBC political thriller The Honourable Woman (2014), which won her the Golden Globe for best actress in a miniseries and an Emmy nomination, and in the HBO series The Deuce, for which she received a further Golden Globe nomination in 2018. She has also made her Broadway debut, in a revival of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing.
In 2021 she wrote and directed her first feature, The Lost Daughter, adapted from Elena Ferrante's novel. It won the best screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival, swept the Gotham Awards for best feature, breakthrough director and screenplay, and earned her an Academy Award nomination for best adapted screenplay. She has been married to the actor Peter Sarsgaard since 2009.
Tracing the roots — Latvia, then in the Russian Empire — mother's grandparents (names and town not documented)
Her mother, the screenwriter Naomi Foner, born Naomi Achs in New York in 1946, is the granddaughter of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe — from Latvia and Poland according to one account, Russia and Poland according to another. Latvia was then part of the Russian Empire. The emigrants are not named.
.svg?width=900)
Latvia, then in the Russian Empire — mother's grandparents (names and town not documented). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.