Peter Sarsgaard: Lovelace Violence Was Tough

13 August 2013

Peter Sarsgaard struggled with the violent scenes in 'Lovelace'.

The actor stars alongside Amanda Seyfried in the new biopic about 1970s porn icon Linda Lovelace and he admits it was tough to film scenes which depict domestic violence between Linda (Seyfried) and her abusive husband Chuck Traynor.

Speaking to BANG Showbiz at a special screening of the new film at London's May Fair Hotel on Monday (12.08.13), he said: "You know, I don't even think about it when I'm doing it. I'd arrive on set a lot of times and I would read what I was going to do that day and I would go, 'That's awful, I'm not gonna do that', and then you go on set and, of course, you kind of have to do it."

In addition to the troubling abuse scenes, the movie also features saucy sex scenes featuring Seyfried and Sarsgaard, but the actor - who is married to 'The Dark Knight' star Maggie Gyllenhaal - feels the violent scenes were more difficult to film than the intimate sequences.

He added: "The violence is always difficult; the sex wasn't a big deal, really.

"I mean, the violence doesn't feel violent when you're doing it because you're holding someone's neck and not really strangling them, so it feels fake. And a lot of the time you're struggling to find the reality to it and the way the story is connected to it. It's actually quite difficult to become connected to it."

Sarsgaard was joined by the film's leading lady at the special screening.

'Lovelace' is in cinemas on August 23.