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NEW YORK -- The top half of Maggie Gyllenhaal is all gussied-up, camera-ready movie star.
Her brown hair is softly braided and wrapped around her head, her blue eyes and plump lips lightly but meticulously made up, and her billowy purple top camouflages her pregnant belly.
Her bottom half is practical, relaxed, working mom-to-be in fitted dark jeans with sandals that reveal chipped dark polish on her toenails.
Gyllenhaal, a self-described clotheshorse, has other things on the brain. Like the baby she and fiance Peter Sarsgaard, who starred in Shattered Glass and last year's Jarhead, are expecting this fall. And her other baby, World Trade Center, which opens today and stars Gyllenhaal (sister of Brokeback Mountain's Jake) as Allison Jimeno, pregnant wife of a Port Authority officer missing in the rubble on Sept. 11.
Seeing the film for the first time made Gyllenhaal, who was out of the country on Sept. 11 but flew back as soon as the airports were open again, go gaga for Gotham.
For Gyllenhaal, who graduated from Columbia University and lives in the West Village with Sarsgaard, 35, and their two cats, "seeing the Port Authority bus rushing downtown, and recognizing the corner of Greenwich and Canal, made me feel very proud to be a New Yorker. I know those places. That's my city."
And she's proud to be in the film.
"This movie was really made out of honesty, out of a desire to honor people who did an incredibly brave thing," says Gyllenhaal, 28, who famously said at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival that "America has done reprehensible things and is responsible in some way" for the 9/11 attacks.
Today, she eschews politics and gives the credit for the film to Stone, better known for incendiary fare such as 1994's Natural Born Killers and 1991's JFK: "Everyone is so scared of what take he'll have on the subject, and it's so interesting to me that it's the most gentle and genuine take I've seen."
Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard, who met three years ago at a dinner party, have no immediate plans to get married. She is busy promoting two other films: the romantic comedy Trust the Man, opening Aug. 18, and the low-budget drama Sherrybaby, out Aug. 25.
They also want to settle in as parents first. "As much as I tried to imagine what pregnancy would be like, it's totally different," says Gyllenhaal, rubbing her belly. "It's blown my mind every step of the way." They've decided to leave a major surprise for delivery day: whether they're having a boy or a girl.
Initially, Gyllenhaal had morning sickness. Now she feels "blissed out. It's part of it, all the hormones. It feels great. It's a real intense experience."
The only downside? "We do have the paparazzi after us now. They like pregnant actresses. They get 20 pictures of me doing nothing. It's weird."
She gets giggly and girlish when discussing her fiance, and she says someday they'll work together. "Peter always says we shouldn't play lovers. He wants to do something 1940s -- where there's a spark between us, but we don't ever get together. Or we do for a second, and then I slap him."
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