Jake Gyllenhaal Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

I love the movies I've been a part of. Someone asked me the other day if I regret the decisions I made and regret being able to make movies, what kind of question is it? That October sky is kind of crazy to be that age, to be 16 and star in an audition for a movie and I worked really hard to get the part so it meant a lot to me, you know, I mean, I remember having to go through auditions. and auditions and auditions and auditions and then proving myself at his meetings and all that and it was like it meant a lot to me and that was very similar to me in the same way that Homer's love that The character has rockets and tries to going out and that kind of drive, love and ambition and trying to prove that you know how to do something bigger than what you came from.

All of those themes are very similar to mine in my life at the time and the real Homer was a lovely guy, the book he wrote was beautiful and he really took me under his wing, he was very kind and engaged with me and I remember working very hard. hard, I remember, but I loved it so much and it's such a beautiful story, I think it holds up to this day, you know, and then you're working with Laura Dern and you're working with Chris Cooper and you know, I've always loved watching work to other actors. Sometimes I would hypnotize myself on the opposite side looking at them.

I don't even always get to be in it because I love watching them and being that age and seeing great acting, that's how you start to learn a specific scene where we were in a fight scene with Chris Cooper, me and he plays my dad. And I remember being really excited for the fight scene because I have an actor, you know, a young, pretty good actor. I can scream and scream and Lamba. I remember him coming up to me after the second take and him saying, "You're not listening." For me, listen to what I'm telling you and I remember it went from just raising my voice and yelling and not coming from a real place to the words he was saying to me hitting me like they hit me in the heart maybe I can go to college maybe even get a job in Cape Canaveral there's nothing here for me the city is dying the miners are dying and everyone knows it here but if you want to get out of here so bad then go, don't go Yes, go, Go, go and I'll be gone forever.

I won't even look back to hear, as an actor, as a person, everything becomes different, everything becomes much more meaningful and I just remember he stopped saying, listen to me and the whole scene changed and a lot of the next shots we used were right after When he told me that Joe Johnston, director of October Sky, directed the first Captain America, he really gave me my first chance and I owe him a lot for what he believed. I wouldn't be here talking to you. I couldn't have made all the movies I've made or even made this Spider-Man movie without Joe believing in me.

I mean, I like to think someone else could have done it. but

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likely they are not the bones of Spider-Man's farmer. I mean entering the MCU and the Marvel Universe. It's huge, a lot is expected of you in the process of making movies and also as a character, and it's the same kind of feeling of someone giving. putting that suit on and putting it on your being like boo is the right thing to do for me. I mean, it's fun. I mean, it's fun knowing everything that happens. I mean, I knew the events of Endgame.

You know this before Endgame came out. I love this speculation because many times. You'll read something or someone will tell you something and you'll realize, oh oh, yeah, that could be true, you know, and it was someone's random idea. I also think a lot of them are wrong and that's fun and feels. like a pressure, it feels like a pressure when you do it, you know, I think people love that character and it's very different from the character in the comics and you know when you're doing something as different from the comics as we did. In this I think you're saying he was working in disastrous times, he has a bland personality basically, just very boring, no, it was like he was Jen, it was really charming, he puts everything into making Spider-Man great, he knows as.

There's a lot of pressure on him and he knows how much people care about that character and he puts everything physically, emotionally and mentally into it. I think it wasn't until literally a day ago, when he finally saw the movie, that he said he could relax. He offered me a lot of advice that he needed and he just kind of fooled me and said yeah, that's exactly how everyone feels when they start in this space and we became friends that way. You know, I think he admires me. I admire them both very much. different reasons and as much as the actors in subsequent press conferences like to talk about how wonderful it was to work with each other and who knows if it's true or not half the time.

I really like him as a human being and I enjoy being with him outside of all this, so it all went into the movie too. Donnie Darko. I found Donnie Darko and the character of Donnie Darko very comforting at a time in my life where I was really lost and trying to find a solution. a lot of things to me about myself, my place in the world, what he was going through, my dad says the job of art is to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, and I think that's very true in de many ways and at that moment I think I was like the world is crazy, you know, you get pulled into it and you're like, wow, it's mind-blowing, you know, and to know that there was a character that was like feeling those same feelings.

He gave me a real outlet and made me not go crazy Donnie, you're an idiot. I have always admired my sister in many ways. I probably give her credit for the reason she wanted to act, why I started acting. I got into this, we were both starting out at Bullough, you know, obviously very ambitious people like there were a lot of similarities between the two of us fighting at the table, maybe you should be the one in therapy, then mom and dad can pay someone $200 an hour to hear all your thoughts so we don't have to do it right, you want to tell mom and dad.

Stop taking your medications. I have admired her since I was born now, as we do with our older brothers, even when we despise them, we love them. them deeply, you know that's the sibling relationship for anyone who has one, working with her was complicated for both of us, it's strange to put a real relationship in a fictional space, but I think that as actors, as Angley said once when I heard it said, we intend to get closer to the truth and we are both real, as truth seekers and scenes, you know, that's what we love to do, so working with someone who calls you, you know, why did you do that?

It's a strange and strange choice. oh that feels true it's honest you know it's so present it was amazing when I look back on it now and that's what I wish I mean that's what I believe I think a scene is only satisfying when you learn something about yourself in it. in a lot of guys and costumes, but honestly where I want to go is places where I don't have that, but I try all these tricks before something real happens, you know, and that's what I love, it's like, what's up with this , did you know? calm down and listen to Chris Cooper every time my sister is also one of those actors.

I mean, that's why she's extraordinary because she's similar to Chris and all the greats. The actors I've had the opportunity to work with constantly tell me to just be still, listen, be honest as best you can. If you're an actor, it was a long journey and it's still a very long journey for that film. What I do know is that The Passion of the Christ' was released by the same company and they had just made an extraordinary amount of money from that movie and with the funds from that movie they were able to take a risk and say, "Okay, we're going to make a movie." theatrical".

Release because you know we have some desperation and thank God they did. I mean, it just goes to show those things that you think are going to fail or if people tell you that's the case, you know that the life of something can be so many that it's going to fail. There will be so many different lives, it's not like a big opening weekend because it's like being open and no one really got a good look at it and in fact if they found it again in London I remember it was doing a play in the West End . and people begin to generate this energy.

I was like, wow, what's going on and then it just came back to life and has continued to be alive for or a decade now stronger. I loved the story. I love the script and I love the story. I love the character of Jeff Bowman. I think I've often said about him that he's really a superhero. You know, the things he went through to get to where he is, survive and live today are of internal endgame proportions. His story taught me more. about my career and about life than anything I've ever done and when I read that I really wanted to be a part of it, you know, there was a scene where I crawled across the parking lot and I got to a window and I was banging on the window and David Gordon Green let the camera roll so that you know, it really unfolds and in the digital world you can even film for a long time and I was there for about 30 minutes in this window and I pushed it further.

I think you know my idea of ​​the fictional part of the character that you know to another space and it was beautiful to discover the pain of that moment and feel many Bostonians who are a team that was as deeply affected as the world was by the event of the bombings of the marathon, I feel that the energy and the hand make us all feel together and I learned two things. I learned that you know that a team like everyone who works is not just an audience, but we are all in it. together, even if someone is behind you, you can't see them, but we are all here together and that is very powerful and we are all in this together and then I also learned that you can't lose your imagination and act.

It's all about imagination and there's a lot of talk about Oh, commitment, and you know method acting and you know how far you go and blah, blah, blah, everyone's favorite conversation when you talk to an actor or not favorite conversation, but It's like that. a conversation to add a lot and I believe deeply in your imagination, that's the fun, it's like the play, it's what you need and I had lost it at that moment and it discouraged me for several days because I got that far. and I just realized that it doesn't affect me anymore. In every film you make, you learn about the process of what you know how far you can take it, what techniques you want to use and I have used my career because I have been lucky enough to work on several films.

I had just formed my production company at the time and we produced that film together with Mandeville. My company has become more about helping other people tell their stories. I'm not into much. of the films that we produce, but I do it occasionally and yes, you know, I grew up with storytellers, you know, and it's just that my true love, you know, seeing how stories are made is really exciting, like I said before, It's like watching an actor. The work is more exciting than acting myself, sometimes you know, I love acting, but it's just a magic of stories I want to keep trying to help, if I have the chance, people know who I am and they know my name, then I can do it . lend it to something to help it finish and see what it did to my life in the five months I did in preparation with police officers throughout Los Angeles County.

I'm in East Los Angeles and what I saw just changed me forever seeing the work they do to be with them watching them do their job to be in sometimes very dangerous situations and also in beautiful situations to see human behavior in its maximum expression. Sometimes I tried it changed everything in the way I see the world so I see it as something very very particular moment in my life in my career something that I needed you know well this is my day job something I'm sorry Brahma Corey this is my job diary some of you may know me as Brian the filming process was great you know I imagine myself a bit of a filmmaker and that's why we were a big part of the process of filming that movie that we filmed with the camera and I, my character has a camera with the that's filming, we didn't want it to be cute, you know, and I actually look at that as an extension, you know, at the end of the Nightcrawler movie, you know, to me, the Nightcrawler movie is the evolution of a cameraman, that's how it was. my philosophy all the time, the evolution of an artist, Nightcrawler, it's just fantastic writing, yes it is.

It's a tried and true model of anything that's great and the storytelling comes from the beginning from great writing and that's not always true, that equation doesn't always work, but in the case of Nightcrawler it was definitely the exception for a few. In one of the best scripts, I read a character that had already been deeply developed by Dan Gilroy before it even came to me, so I had to put the finishing touches on it and that's how it should be, it very rarely is that way when I play it. I read it and I was like, "Oh my God, he's given me thousands of possibilities, so many options," but I had this vision of this guy and he talked a lot in the scripts, in the way he talked, and I was always trying to wrap it up.

I thought there couldn't be anything physically imposing about this guy, it was all mind and from what I know about the people he tellsThey like blood here more than anywhere else in their body, it's that Many times they don't think about what they are going to eat next or if they can't eat or what they are going to do next. They have one goal and one goal only and that's where they're headed and I thought I'd gotten him on board with that idea. We spent, you know, 20 nights shooting the movie, 20 to shoot those movies like it was nothing in the time of the movie, you know, and I just knew we were going to have to do it.

Go and there were like three or four page monologues. You know, this guy had to say, so part of the reason why the speed with which he speaks comes from just saying: How can I, as an actor, ensure this incredible writing? and the performance I'm going to give remains in the movie, you have to say it quickly. I also want to go into the next room and meet your team, the station manager, the director and the presenters and start developing my own personal relationships. I would like to start getting to know you this morning. You will take me.

You will introduce me as the owner and president of video production news and remind them of some of my many other stories. People talk about him like he's a creepy sociopath. And it's true. to that and I think he's a prophetic, he was a kind of prophetic symbol of capitalism and the leadership that we've now become accustomed to, but I always looked at him as this beautiful artist learning how to use a camera and the form. what he was filming was obviously a little perverse and sick, but at the same time he really saw himself as an artist and you can see that and that to me was a big thing, so I'm very proud of that film.

Look at it, the style of how he shoots things changes when he moves bodies, you know, it's totally illegal and disgusting in the movie, you know, I don't know how different that is from a Damien Hirst painting or David, a Hurst piece, is that? You know? That's how he saw it, that was my perspective, while playing that character that was fascinating and disturbing in Brokeback Mountain, I think they had cast us for our essences without really understanding what our essences were and that's outside of sexuality, I mean, We're like two straight guys cast in these roles, but who we are, who we were and we got to see and I don't know if I could, so when the movie got the response that it got, I think all of us. who had been cast, that includes all the actors except the main actors Heath and I and Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams, like I don't think we recognized what Aang had seen in us, so we're kind of wandering around blind to the depth. and the echo that the movie made we understood the power of the story, but I think playing a character in it we didn't fully understand and I don't think we ever had any idea that it would have the impact that this would add here on the kids again the next summer.

Well, maybe not like I said and I was getting married in November trying to get something on the ranch. I guess you're my hope, my dad is putting, give me your hand, where I'll be back, the army, don't make me mad about this. It's amazing that he's very close to you in the pre-production process before you start filming and then during filming you become a kind of painting that he's looking at and he doesn't want to touch anything to disturb it and he becomes a little cold in I actually think you have to focus your heart on the goal well, you know, do what you do in front of it.

I enjoy essays and I think writing should hold up to the rehearsal process and I think you learned a lot in the In the rehearsal process too, for the

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part, you get through everything. I mean, there are some moments or it's nice to just meet someone and go, but I think if you're going to get to a place where you really want to land with someone you want to be present with. with them is very good, particularly in emotional things and things like that, you need to at least spend enough time with them for all that to forgive me, but all the small talk goes away and then you can get to that when I say all of us.

I've got a broken man, I can't leave you, you know those lines tell you what we could have had a good life together, a really good life, what's our place like, but you in the water, Danis, so what we have now , he broke now? It's all based on that, that's all we have, so I hope you know that if you never know the rest, you count the damn few times we've been together in almost 20 years and measure the short leash you keep me on. and then you ask me about Mexico and you tell me that you kill me for needing something that I almost never understand you have no idea how bad it gets I'm not you I can't do it at a couple of heights once or twice a year you're too much for me yes , good horse I wish I knew how to leave you we had rehearsed it we had gone months before when it was still snowing there and I remember it was covered in two or three feet of snow we didn't even see what the ground was like at a time when I had my dog ​​who has since passed away jumping through the snow.

I remember and then spring came and everything melted and we filmed the scene and there was a palpable feeling. The feeling of that scene while we were making it to make a movie that even just works is a miracle and when it resonates even beyond that it's impossible and in the end it has nothing to do with you, just being a Brokeback Mountain, that's the feeling . I feel deeply that it had nothing to do with me, it came to me, I was honored to be a part of this and now it belongs to everyone else in a way that I can't even understand and that's why I empathize with it like any artist or any director. , anyone does this because it's like what the audience's experience is and what you experience are two totally different things and often reconciling those things is the weirdest part and you never know what people will respond to.

Test your The best thing about it is that at all times you put all your time and your heart and your beliefs and what you're doing and I think that applies to everyone and everything they do when you worry and then you're constantly surprised by what you people love and what they don't