Just about every journalist these days refers to Jake Gyllenhaal's characters as misfits--a label the 21-year-old actor finds misleading.
"Misfit--that's such crap," responded Gyllenhaal, whose credits include the films October Sky, Donnie Darko, Bubble Boy, and this summer's Lovely & Amazing and The Good Girl. "I find wounded to be a better word, but I don't like it sounding inactive--victim-y. I just choose these [roles] because there's stuff to do, whereas other characters are just 'the football jock,' or 'the nerd,' or 'the best friend.' If the material is good, it leaves me more room to play. I've had many chances in movies to be emotionally unstable."
Though he's had the chance to work on a number of mainstream movies geared towards teen audiences, Gyllenhaal (pronounced jill-en-hall) has "flat out" said no to such projects, in favor of more thought-provoking, edgy work supported by strong writing.
"I feel like I've unintentionally boxed myself in because I've chosen good writing," said the actor. "For me it really just came down to that and continuously comes down to that."
Tomorrow's Sell Out?
Gyllenhaal is the latest "it" actor to hit Hollywood. With five movies coming out between last fall and this September (his next picture, Moonlight Mile, co-stars Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon, and Holly Hunter), Gyllenhaal is, like Tobey Maguire before him, being sought out by top directors as the next leading man. Gyllenhaal is currently gearing up to shoot his first big-budget action picture, The Day After Tomorrow, directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Patriot). Is the young actor finally ready to sell out?
"I'm not going to; it's just that simple," answered Gyllenhaal. "I do have a strategy, in the sense that I am making a big movie with the hope that it will give me the opportunity to make the movies that I want to make. Actors have to make political decisions. They have to say, 'In order to do what I love to do, I need to make a movie that everyone is going to see.' But if I'm going to make that movie, I'm going to make it with integrity and I'm going to try to bring it to the most human level possible."
So far, Gyllenhaal has, indeed, brought immense heart to his characters, whether playing an aspiring rocket scientist in October Sky, a schizophrenic teen driven to commit strange crimes in Donnie Darko, or, most recently, The Good Girl's Holden, a college dropout who has an obsessive affair with an older, married co-worker (played by Jennifer Aniston). His work has garnered much praise from audiences, critics, directors, and fellow actors.
"Holden was the hardest part to cast," noted The Good Girl's director, Miguel Arteta. "In two and a half months, I saw more than a hundred kids. It was the same with Star Maps [Arteta's first film]. It's hard to find young actors who have this kind of range. For the part of Holden, we needed somebody who was dark and you really believed their sadness at the beginning of the movie. Then later he becomes deranged, kind of manic. With Jake, you can believe his sadness and he also has this incredible energy."
"He responds purely and simply, I guess because he listens so well," said Nicole Holofcener, who directed Gyllenhaal in Lovely & Amazing. "He really focused on [co-star] Catherine Keener and listened intently to everything her character said. He was incredibly focused but never took himself too seriously. He couldn't resist cracking us all up, which he did, all the time. He'd usually have four drooling females from the set laughing at his bad jokes. He is a true clown--brilliant, tragic, and bittersweet."
Said Susan Sarandon of her recent collaboration with Gyllenhaal on Moonlight Mile, "I can't say enough about him. I adore him. He's so smart and so agile at what he does. His work ethic and professionalism is way beyond his years. I find him inventive and questioning--and he's so cute. I learned a lot from working with him."
Having Connections
Gyllenhaal's professionalism probably comes from hanging around his parents' sets when he and his sister, Maggie--also an actor--were growing up. His father, Stephen, is a TV and film director (Waterland, Homegrown). His mom, Naomi Foner, is a screenwriter, whose credits include the films Losing Isaiah and A Dangerous Woman, both directed by her husband.
"I was definitely influenced," said Gyllenhaal, who was cast in small parts in A Dangerous Woman and Homegrown. His first role was playing Billy Crystal's son in City Slickers. "It just started off as wanting to mimic things. It came from an instinct of wanting to observe people."
Gyllenhaal never formally trained as an actor, concentrating his studies, instead, on junior high, high school, and eventually college--he attended Columbia University for two years before leaving to pursue acting full time. However, he more recently came to the conclusion that his instincts as an actor could take him only so far. As he said, "Technique is, I think, what separates a child from an adult."
His realization that he needed to develop an actual technique came from his awareness of his own limitations as an actor. "There are ways of saying and feeling lines that can lead someone to melodrama--bad acting--and I think sometimes I do go there," he admitted.
Gyllenhaal recently began working with an acting coach, though it took him some time to find the right one.
Said the actor, "I went through a series of coaches and settled on working with someone, and basically what we do is, I go thoroughly through a script every day for months and break it down. I give everything a connection to something in my life. You can't play anything that's not close to you. That's what I've discovered throughout this year of performances I have been giving. I can't play anything that is truly real if I don't understand it myself."
True Grit
Gyllenhaal was also prompted to develop a stronger technique after veteran actors like Hoffman, Sarandon, and Hunter said to him, as Gyllenhaal put it, "You don't know what you're doing and you've got to learn." Hoffman, in particular, advised Gyllenhaal to get onstage, something he had yet to do. Said the younger actor, "Dustin told me, 'Test your true grit. Then you'll see,' and I did."
This spring Gyllenhaal performed with Hayden Christensen and Anna Paquin in the successful London production of Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth, an experience Gyllenhaal described bluntly as "fucking hard" but amazing.
"It was the first time I tested out doing a tremendous amount of work," he said. "I know now that whatever I do next, I'll put so much preparation into it, out of respect for everybody involved, out of respect for myself, and out of respect for the audience that will see it."
He added, "That's the thing that pisses me off about myself and about other young actors--approaching things nonchalantly."
Still, it seems like this actor is far from lazy, has a strong head on his shoulders, and, most impressively, is dedicated to becoming a better artist over time.
As director Arteta sees it, "My prediction is that Jake is in it for the long haul. He's extremely bright and humble, and when you have that combination, I think you can get longevity."
Though Gyllenhaal admits that he sometimes gets caught up in the attention he's been getting, he is trying not to let that be the focus of his life. He realizes that this business is fickle and today's flavor-of-the-month star can be tomorrow's nobody.
"When I started acting, I was really into the bullshit," said Gyllenhaal of the more superficial aspects of the business that have more to do with fame than talent. "I depended on it every day to bring me some sort of happiness and instant gratification. Just as quickly as it would bring me up, it would let me down. If you recognize that this business chews you up and spits you out, you can't get caught up in it and make it your life. Just see how unhappy people are when they do. I don't want to be unhappy. So I'll just keep trying to do work about some unhappy people to, hopefully, teach myself and other people something." BSW
