Humanity must work together or else, Peter Sarsgaard (Dead Man Walking, Boys Don’t Cry) told reporters during a Saturday roundtable interview conducted as part of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), in which he also explained why he joined a “No Kings” protest on U.S. President Donald Trump’s birthday, and why he doesn’t believe in Elon Musk’s Mars colonization plans as a way to safe the human race.
Sarsgaard shared his thoughts and insights after receiving the KVIFF President’s Award during the festival opening ceremony on Friday night. In his acceptance speech, he spoke out against divisions, especially in the U.S., saying: “The enemies are the forces that divide us.” He added: “There is no going it alone. As my country retreats from its global responsibilities and tries to go it alone, it is also being divided into factions from within — factions of politics, gender, sexuality, race, Jews split over the war.” Sarsgaard’s wife, Maggie Gyllenhaal, identifies as Jewish.
Given such dangers as climate change and nuclear or other war, Sarsgaard said: “We’re all going to die. Our children are all going to live on the same planet, and maybe Elon [Musk]’s will live on Mars. It doesn’t look that nice to me. I think you have to be born on Mars and never have seen Earth to think Mars is nice.”
He continued: “We’re all fucked. So we have to connect. It’s very simple. That’s not even political. I’m not political in that way. I’m not endorsing candidates.”
Sarsgaard first referenced Musk when asked about his upcoming Apple TV+ series, the book adaptation Neuromancer, which he is currently shooting. “I play a guy who has created a kind of AI that is used all over the world, and he’s basically the most powerful, richest guy in the world,” he explained. “And because the world is going to shit, he has a place where he can be that’s [far] away. So, I’m playing this guy who sort of manages to really get away, away from Earth, Elon Musk-style – ‘we’ll just go to Mars while this one goes to shit.’ There is no place to go! So that really interested me.”
Sarsgaard then mentioned how apocalypse-fearing technology and other billionaires have been building survivalist bunkers. “I’ve heard more rich people talk about this. Many wealthy people are buying properties, say, in New Zealand, and they’ve heard that that’s the place to be,” he explained. “There is no fucking place to be unless you have a nuclear arsenal to keep everyone else at bay!! There is no place to go. We’re all in this together. So that theme interested me. I was also a big fan of the book. I read it in high school, and I just loved a lot of the language. I’m going to get to meet [the author] William Gibson. He’s in the show, and he had lines like ‘undulating tsunamis of delight.’ I remember a lot of the language is so muscular and crazy.”
The star also shared that he has his own place far away, but he doesn’t expect to be safe there if a catastrophe strikes. “I actually have a piece of property that is way out in the woods and has its own water source,” he said. “It’s a great place to be, maybe, for climate change. And I hear people say this sometimes: ‘Where’s the best place to be for climate change?’ When it happens, there’s no place to be, because you think the world is going to stay in the desert, where there’s no water? Everyone’s going to go. They don’t care that you own the property.”
Notably, the theme of AI and machines having an increasing role in replacing human interactions also plays into Sarsgaard’s worry about a lack of social connections. In 2023, Sarsgaard warned about AI. “I think we can all really agree that an actor is a person and that a writer is a person, but apparently we can’t,” he said at the Venice International Film Festival back then. He urged the industry not to hand over stories about connections “to the machines and the eight billionaires that own them.”
Speaking of billionaires, Sarsgaard told reporters in Karlovy Vary on Saturday that, “I like going to a protest sometimes to look at all these people. ‘We can do it! We all believe in something bigger’.” The most recent protest was a big one, and he went to it with his 13-year-old daughter. “I went to the one on Trump’s birthday, the anti-Trump’s birthday – the ‘No Kings’ protest,” he said. “I went to the one that was right outside the New York Public Library.”
Peter Sarsgaard at the 2025 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival opening ceremony where he received the KVIFF President’s Award
Courtesy of FIlm Servis Karlovy Vary
His daughter “was really moved about a collective action like that,” the actor recalled. “I know it seems political, but to me, ‘No Kings’ is not that political. All the power consolidated in the fewest number of people sounds like a bad idea. I believe, I guess, in a kind of combination of socialism and democracy. But I don’t know what to call it. I I think there are other people who know that shit better than I do. I just want everybody to have an equal opportunity.”
At the end of his conversation with this group of reporters, Sarsgaard explained what’s next for him after Neuromancer. It’s a film with Swiss director Michael Koch that is called Erosion. Koch’s A Piece of Sky was made with non-actors, “so I’ll also be acting with mostly non-actors,” the star explained. “We’re filming it in Lucerne. He wrote the role for me.”
He portrays a skilled person. “I play a brain surgeon,” Sarsgaard said. “I’ve been going to all these brain surgeries, and I’ve been going to so many brain surgeries that at this point I am kind of like feeling I could do it.”
He also shared about the role: “It’s a really huge canvas for me as an actor. I’m in every frame of the movie, and it’s not just a lead role in that sense. It’s a character who really goes somewhere. He starts in one place, and he ends up in another. I don’t know where it will be. I’m curious, and I really trust this director. He’s a really visual storyteller, and so I think that will be a very good combination.”
At one point during Saturday’s conversation, Sarsgaard lauded his wife, Gyllenhaal, for being such a knowledgeable director. Could fans ever see him take a seat in the director’s chair? “Maybe I have one movie in me to direct one day,” he replied. “I actually have an idea for something I would like to direct at some point, but it would be a very actor-driven thing. And I have an appreciation for cinema, and the visual telling of the story, but my wife has the complete package.”
The actor most recently starred in director Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5. He has also wrapped production on Warner Bros.’ The Bride!, which also stars Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley and is set for release later this year. Directed by Gyllenhaal, the film takes place in 1930s Chicago and puts a spin on the classic Frankenstein story.
For his role as a man suffering from dementia in Michel Franco’s Memory, opposite Jessica Chastain, Sarsgaard won the Volpi Cup for best actor at the 2023 Venice festival. In series, he has starred in the likes of Presumed Innocent, The Killing, and Dopesick.
In unveiling that he would receive this year’s honor, KVIFF organizers lauded Sarsgaard for being “renowned for his range and ability to access what is behind the often-complicated facades of the characters he plays.” In the actor’s honor, the fest is screening the 2003 journalism drama Shattered Glass.