Maggie Gyllenhaal is now a small screen queen

Maggie Gyllenhaal has made the move to television for new series The Honourable Woman.

The latest movie star to make the switch to telly is Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Robert De Niro, Halle Berry and John Cusack are also swapping the big screen for small this year.

And Maggie, the star of big movies like The Dark Knight and White House Down, says she can see the appeal after filming new BBC drama The Honourable Woman.

The first part was screened on Thursday and it runs for the next seven weeks.

“I know it differs from project to project, but I can see now all the benefits of television,” confides Maggie.

“I just loved the scope of the drama and how a TV series grants you the freedom to really flesh out a character.

“Having worked in films for so long and having become used to the two-hour rhythm, I found it difficult to get my head round regularly shooting scenes out of order.

“But, as time passed, it felt really wild and unpredictable. And that excited me.”

The new political thriller is set against the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Maggie plays Nessa Stein who, as a child, witnesses her father’s assassination. The events haunt her to the present day and the actress says it was a gift of a part.

“When I read the scripts I thought they were incredible,” confides the New York-born star.

“I’d never read anything like them before. On one hand they had the thriller aspect, with the twists, turns and secrets. But underneath, there’s the human emotion and that’s what interested me the most.”

She continues: “Nessa is a very powerful, smart and emotional woman, but at the same time she’s broken and confused with a troubled past. She is deeply conflicted about past events.

“Everything about Nessa is very intense. She’s just so much more alive than I am, or any of us, and that was such a joy to play. It took all of me to play her and I had never been presented with a challenge quite like that before.”

Although Maggie’s as American as they come, Nessa is very English. That meant working on her British accent, but the 36-year-old says that didn’t trouble her.

“I’ve worked on two plays and two movies with an English accent,” she adds. “So I knew I was competent at doing it.

“It wasn’t like I was learning something from scratch, but this was the first time I’ve ever felt it was really in my bones.

“I loved playing Nessa and I now feel like a fully-fledged Anglophile.”

The Honourable Woman, BBC2, Thursday.