Maggie Gyllenhaal has built a reputation on playing edgy characters. Her breakout role in 2002’s “Secretary” featured the actress getting trussed up and spanked by James Spader, while 2006’s “Sherrybaby” saw her playing an ex-con mom who kidnaps her own kid. In “Hysteria,” earlier this year, she was a suffragette who falls for the man who invented the vibrator.
But the 34-year-old actress says she was actually stunned to find her latest movie, “Won’t Back Down,” to be so polarizing. What may have seemed, on the page, an easy, open-and-shut story about fighting for better education is turning into a political firestorm.
The story of a working mom who struggles to find her daughter a better education than the one she’s getting in her failing Pittsburgh public school, the film has already garnered both condemnation and praise for its critical stance on teachers unions. (In the movie, unionized teachers are shown watching lazily as their classes run wild and refusing to stay after school to help struggling kids, while the principal of the school ousts a teacher for even bringing up the idea of changing the system.)
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, accused the movie of “using the most blatant stereotypes and caricatures I have ever seen.” But StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee, who was featured in the 2010 New York charter school documentary “Waiting for Superman,” has thrown her support behind it, hosting a screening of the movie at the Democratic National Convention. (It was also shown at the Republican convention earlier.)
“I was totally surprised,” Gyllenhaal says of the divided reaction to early screenings of the film, which co-stars Viola Davis. She plays the teacher who teams up with Gyllenhaal’s character to explore the idea of taking over the failing school, in a move known as a “Parent Trigger Law.” The concept is better known in California than here (though similar debates regarding charter schools are prevalent in New York).
“I think the people who are saying it’s anti-union,” says Gyllenhaal, “a lot of that is coming from people who haven’t seen it.”
After all, “I come from, like, the leftist of the left,” she says of her family (which includes actor brother Jake). “I would never be able to go home for Thanksgiving if it were anti-union!”
Gyllenhaal, a mom herself, lives in Brooklyn with husband Peter Sarsgaard and their two daughters. Gloria was just born in April. Ramona, their older child, who attends a private school, is entering first grade this year, says Gyllenhaal.
“The way she’s being taught, that’s just starting to really show itself now,” she says. “Kindergarten is really about socialization, I think.”
Gyllenhaal, who went to private school Harvard-Westlake in Los Angeles and then Columbia University, says it’s more important than ever for kids to begin thinking critically at an early age — not always an easy skill to teach in overcrowded classrooms in failing schools. “Just knowing how to read is very basic, but kids also have to learn how to think things through and analyze them, and have their own opinions,” she says. “Otherwise, we end up where we don’t even know what we believe.”
She acknowledges that the issue of education is obviously easier for people like her, who have the means to choose where their children go to school.
“People with money will always be able to educate their children,” she says. “The issue is protecting people who don’t have the money to put their kids in private school.
“I really do think this is one of those issues that crosses party lines,” she insists. “At least in my fantasy, I believe that everyone thinks children should be educated the best we can. We obviously need to improve on the educational system in this country. We need an educated electorate in order to make democracy work.
“If that gets overpowered by, I think, a real misunderstanding,” she says, “it will be such a shame.”
sstewart@nypost.com