the film that made her a star

Film Although is one of those articles which spends as much time talking about the processes of interviewing someone than actually reporting what they said, Jess Cartner-Morley does go some way towards getting under the skin of Maggie Gyllenhaal:

"Gyllenhaal is good at subverting expectations and asserting control. The first time the world sat up and took notice of her, as Lee Holloway in Secretary, she was bent over a desk in a pencil skirt, playing a submissive in a warped but oddly tender sadomasochistic relationship with her boss. Gyllenhaal breathed life into the role, making a character who could have been played as a passive sex object into something much more subtle and intriguing."

Unfortunately, it completely fails to mention what I think is her best performance, in Don Roos' Happy Endings but you can't have everything.