Article Dec 03, 2016

You are no longer passing

Peter Sarsgaard: 'I don't hide the world's problems from my kids'

Actor Peter Sarsgaard doesn't believe the world's horrors should be hidden from his kids.

The Boys Don't Cry star has two daughters with actress wife Maggie Gyllenhaal, and while Ramona and Gloria are only 10 and four years old respectively, he doesn't shield them from the horrors taking place in the world so they're not surprised when bad things happen.

  "My own kid just got old enough - she's 10 - where I told her what happened on 9/11," he tells WENN. "She saw the lights going up and asked, 'What's that?' So here you go. You just say it in the most simple terms without a lot of unnecessary detail.

"If you make death a scary thing and tragedy not to be thought about, it just gives it more power. You have to kind of like look at the dead bird on the sidewalk and talk about what happened to it. Not kick it away."

The 45-year-old adds that teaching his girls about "gruesome" religious stories as part of their Catholic faith, such as "Christ hung by a nail through his hands!", means they will be prepared when they become old enough to understand tragedies in the real world.

  "That's my own parenting style. So it won't be a big surprise at age 15 for them when people die," he added.

It also seems their girls were aware of what happened in the recent U.S. presidential election. Maggie, 39, posted a picture on her account after Hillary Clinton's shocking defeat to Donald Trump which seemingly showed her daughters holding posters which read, "girls against bullies" and "I'm not giving up and neither should you". The signs were held over their faces as they stood in a garden on a mini trampoline.

In the caption she quoted Clinton's concession speech, writing, "'2 (sic) all the little girls watching...never doubt that you are valuable and powerful & deserving of every chance & opportunity in the world.' HC"