GQ sat down with Peter Sarsgaard and Amanda Seyfried to talk about Lovelace, the new film their in opening Friday. They wanted to know why they decided to do this movie.
On what motivated them to join the cast
Seyfried: I just wanted to play somebody real. I needed a challenge—that was the initial thing.
Sarsgaard: I was really reluctant to do it. I’m not sure I have an honest answer for that question. I mean, it was kind of the opposite of everything else that was going on in my life at the time. I had a pregnant wife. Like, jumping into a world and getting lost—it was the exact opposite of being a father. The violence, the sex. That was probably the reason I didn’t want to do it, theoretically, but it’s probably all the reasons that drew me to it as well.
On when they first experienced porn
Seyfried: Yeah. I was five or six. Six, I think.
Sarsgard: You were six?
Seyfried: Yeah. It was a cop—a guy dressed in a cop costume, and it was a girl going down on him. It was the first time I’d ever seen a penis, and I remember it being very graphic, and I remember when he came: it was so terrifying. It was funny. But it was also,like, so, so, so wrong. It was 1990 or 1991, and so AIDS was really rampant. Watching any kind of sexual acts when you’re a six-year-old would make you think you were going to contract AIDS somehow.
Random sort of related thought. Remember when you were a kid and a girl hugged you and all your friends said you had cooties? I just realized they were pretty much calling the girl a dirty whore.
On Amanda Seyfried’s porn name
Seyfried: Mine’s Bad Pussy Washington.
Seyfried: Actually, no, wait—Bad Pussy St. Cloud. That was my very first street.
Either is a pretty good porn name. Mostly because they both sound like Bond villains which opens up so many porn possibilities.
On whether Sarsgaard’s porn-stache was fake or not
Sarsgaard: What do you mean? I can’t believe you would say that!
Seyfried: That’s a real man’s moustache.
Sarsgaard: And you called it skeevy. You know, I don’t know. I don’t really know how to respond. Part of me wants to say that it was a fake moustache now that you called it skeevy! It’s macho, man! Like Magnum PI.
Amanda on porn-staches
Seyfried: You know, I’m a big fan of moustaches. I think it’s because—and this is not Freudian innuendo at all—my father has a moustache.
Everybody. We’ve found Amanda Seyfried’s weakness. All we have to do now is start growing out our porn-staches and ask her if she she wants a mustache ride.