John Peter Sarsgaard (; born March 7, 1971) is an American actor. He studied at the Actors Studio, before rising to prominence playing atypical and sometimes villainous roles in film and television. He made his film debut with Dead Man Walking (1995). He gained recognition for his roles in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), Boys Don't Cry (1999), and The Center of the World (2001). He received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Charles Lane in Shattered Glass (2003) and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for playing a man with dementia in Memory (2023). Sarsgaard has acted in films such as Garden State, Kinsey (both 2004), Jarhead, Flightplan (both 2005), Elegy (2008), An Education, Orphan (both 2009), Lovelace, Blue Jasmine (both 2013), Black Mass (2015), Jackie (2016), and The Lost Daughter (2021). He is also known for acting in blockbuster films, such as Knight and Day (2010), Green Lantern (2011), The Magnificent Seven (2016), and The Batman (2022). Sarsgaard is also known for his television roles including in the AMC/Netflix crime series The Killing (2013), the Hulu limited series The Looming Tower (2018) and Dopesick (2021), and the Apple TV+ series Presumed Innocent (2024), earning Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Dopesick and Presumed Innocent. Sarsgaard made his Broadway debut portraying Boris Alexeyevich Trigorin in the revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull (2008).