A real interesting interview with Jake in the Brittish newspaper "THE DAILY TELEGRAPH dated 10/21. It's a lenghty interview, but a good read.
Evidently he's growing his beard for the film "BROTHERS" which he is starring in. THe interviewer comments on his SNL cameo appearance looking somewhat like the president of Iran.
I Really liked this quote from Jake in the interview. PPl must mispell any name quite often.
"You can write whatever you like, just spell my name right.'"
The link for the DAILY TELEGRAPH isn't working so I'm posting the entire nterview. No photos unfortunately.
Jake Gyllenhaal: 'Aggression is a part of me'
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/10/2007
Jake Gyllenhaal's latest role plunges him into the world of terrorism, torture and difficult choices – and it suits him down to the ground. He talks to Nigel Farndale about his life in hollywood and the joy of 'celebrity godparents'
He may have a large head, but at least it is a film actor's large head, one that casting directors and cameramen favour. The 'he' I refer to is Jake Gyllenhaal, pronounced 'Jill-en-hall'. The favouritism is to do with the body-to-head ratio: think Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman; big heads, small and compact bodies. True, at 6ft 2in, Gyllenhaal is taller than the average film star, but tall actors can have that golden ratio, too. Look at Rupert Everett and Hugh Grant.
Jake Gyllenhaal: 'I do get taken down a lot at home. I'm the little brother'
Anyway, I mention this because I am on a low and squashy sofa, while Gyllenhaal is managing to sprawl, somehow, on a high and upright chair. The man is almost horizontal, with his neck disappearing into his shoulders and his long legs foreshortened in front of him, in front of me. From this viewpoint, I can appreciate that his body-to-head ratio is golden indeed.
He is golden in another respect. At 26 he has become one of the biggest names in Hollywood. As he himself jokes, he has gone in a short space of time from having directors say, 'Who is Jake Gyllenhaal?' to 'Get me Jake Gyllenhaal' to 'Get me someone who looks like Jake Gyllenhaal.'
In the past eight years he has starred in 14 films, but the one that put him on the radar was the strange and possibly deep, possibly meaningless Donnie Darko in 2001. Three years later he had a more conventional box office hit with The Day After Tomorrow, about the apocalyptic effects of global warming. But it is on the three films he made in 2005 that his reputation rests: Proof, about a maths genius played by Gwyneth Paltrow; Jarhead, Sam Mendes's film about marines kicking their heels while waiting for the first Gulf war to start; and Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee's lyrical epic about the relationship between two gay cowboys. Gyllenhaal received an Oscar nomination for that one. Gravity disguised as lightness of manner: that is what critics have identified as the secret of his mesmerising screen presence. Like Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, they say, he knows how to emote without words.
In person his manner seems easy, his voice gentle with dark undercurrents. Gyllenhaal's eyes are blue, and big like a cow's, his nose is solid-looking and he has a full and sculpted mouth which turns up at the corners. He is talking about how, despite being born there, he is not really a Hollywood person. 'I just don't really buy it. But I do buy London, because there is an appreciation of growth here.'
Having no idea what he means by the phrase 'appreciation of growth', and suspecting he doesn't either – he is bright and articulate, was educated at Columbia University indeed, but he does occasionally slip into actor-speak – I ask him about another growth, the one on his face. 'This?' he says stroking a neatly clipped Edwardian beard that is dark auburn in colour and at odds with the sloppy, crewneck jumper and T-shirt ensemble he is wearing. 'I grew it for The Brothers, a Jim Sheridan film.'
Oh, I thought it might be to play the president of Iran.
'You saw that?' he says with a laugh. 'Yeah, right, supposedly he looks like me.' He refers to his cameo in a recent Saturday Night Live sketch: it was a rap song called I Ran. One of the lyrics was about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being like 'a hairy Jake Gyllenhaal.'
He still gets recognised, even with the beard. 'There is a certain type of fan who will recognise you no matter what disguise you wear. But, hey, I have a grey spot right here.' He points to his beard.
'Maybe when I've got grey all over no one will recognise me. My sister has a grey spot there,' he points to his head. 'Maybe it's something genetic.'
His sister is the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, who made her name in Secretary. Must have been weird for him to watch that one, I say, especially the erotically charged scenes in which his sister is stripped and spanked by her boss. 'Well it wasn't necessarily erotic for me,' he says.
I compliment him on his use of the word 'necessarily'. 'Thank you. It's funny, when she was first going for auditions everyone was telling her she wasn't sexy, not sexual. I remember her buying some skimpy cut-off dress for one audition and it just wasn't her. Now she is treated as a sex object. Go figure.'
His sister appeared with him in Donnie Darko; are they competitive? 'I think I was for a time – there was some sibling rivalry – but then we both realised it was a bit dumb. We grew out of it.'
He can afford to be magnanimous because his is the career that has gone through the roof. His parents are also in the film industry – his father is a director, his mother a scriptwriter (she was Oscar nominated for Running on Empty) – but, successful though they are, he has left them behind, too. Meal times at home must be a nightmare. 'I do get taken down a lot at home. Put in my place. I'm the little brother.'
Thanks to this background, though, he says he is fluent in the language of film, like someone growing up in France is fluent in French. Also he grew up watching his parents go through periods where they were getting awards and enjoying success and then, bang, one bad film and a strange kind of gloom would descend on the household.
His new film won't be that 'one bad one' for him. Rendition is not only thought-provoking and compelling; it also has an ingenious narrative twist which I won't spoil for you, and which I am not sure I can explain anyway (it is to do with a time shift). Gyllenhaal plays a CIA agent who has to oversee the interrogation and torture of a Muslim terrorist suspect – not in America but in the unnamed country to which the suspect has been flown in what is euphemistically known as 'extraordinary rendition'. The film explores the moral ambiguities of this policy.
'You may be torturing an innocent man,' Gyllenhaal says. 'On the other hand you may be torturing a guilty man and the information you elicit from him could save the lives of 5,000 innocent civilians.
'That is the moral dilemma faced by my character in the film. That said, I think for CIA people in those circumstances, moral imperatives do not come into play. They leave that for the philosophers. All they care about is what is working and what isn't working. Practicality wins over morality. Extraordinary rendition is intended to protect. Sadly, as a policy, it has been over-used and misused.'
Considering what happened to the country singers the Dixie Chicks when they spoke out about the Iraq war, is he worried he is going to get hate-mail accusing him of being treasonous and unpatriotic? 'I have gotten the usual accusations that this is lefty propaganda. In my opinion I feel like there is not much despargy, dispari, sorry?…'
'Disparity.'
'Thank you. That's going to look good in print: "The guy can't even say disparity." I flew in yesterday and my tongue is still on American time. I can see that in America people see this huge disparity between Left and Right, but actually they are more alike than different. If you criticise extraordinary rendition, or Guantanamo, or Abu Ghraib, that doesn't make you a lefty, that makes you a humanitarian.'
Does he feel ashamed to be an American? 'Well, it's complicated, isn't it? There is a lot of fear in America at the moment and some of it is justified. I wouldn't want to lay it all on one political leader.'
Spoken like a politician, or at least a politically engaged Hollywood actor who campaigned for the Democrats in the 2004 American election, appeared in 'Rock the Vote' advertising and is talked about as the next George Clooney, or God forbid, Sean Penn.
It's not unheard of for an actor to become a politician in America, I note: is that a career move he has considered? 'I think it is a sad time when actors become politicians and politicians become actors, but actually the two roles do overlap. I don't want to run for office, though I am an active member of the Civil Liberties Union. I believe in the First Amendment. I believe the right to free speech is inalienable and that we put that freedom in jeopardy when we throw out due process with rendition. Personally, I would say extraordinary rendition is not morally ambiguous. It is wrong.'
I can see the headlines now, I say. 'Hollywood liberal thinks torture is wrong shock!' He has the good grace to laugh. 'You can say I'm in favour of it if you like. That might be quite funny. Say I tried to torture you during the interview. Say Jake was torturing me with his boring comments.'
He adds that he knows how annoying it can be when actors start lecturing people about politics. 'I don't think audiences need to know my political beliefs to appreciate this film. Nor do they need to know who I am dating. It's not important.'
I haven't asked who he is dating, but since he raised the subject, he did make some intriguingly ambiguous comments about his sexual orientation at the time Brokeback Mountain came out. A broad grin spreads across his face and he covers his head with his hands. 'I know, I know.' He is single at the moment. For several years he had an on-off affair with Kirsten Dunst. And yet?…
I quote something he said about homosexuality: 'I don't think I'd be afraid of it if it happened.' What on earth did he mean by that? 'Nothing like that has ever happened to me. I live in a different world. What I was trying to say was why leave out possibilities in my life? It wasn't meant to be provocative.'
So let's get it on the record: is he saying he is open to persuasion? 'No, I am not open to persuasion myself, but the idea of homosexuality is acceptable to me. I grew up in a city where half the people I know are gay. Both of my godfathers are gay.'
Paul Newman is gay! He laughs again. 'No, he's my celebrity godfather.' What's a celebrity godfather? 'That's the godfather that the media give you. He's a close friend of my family. He taught me to drive. I have literal godfathers and celebrity godfathers.'
I see. And Jamie Lee Curtis, is she a celebrity godmother or a literal godmother? 'Both. That's why it is confusing growing up in Hollywood.'
OK, having established that he is not bisexual, was he being quite calculating when he allowed people to think he was? 'It was meant as a way of saying it was important for Heath [Ledger, his co-star in Brokeback Mountain] and I to have the movie exist as the movie, but also to have people know it was two straight actors playing those parts.'
I think I follow. The chemistry and tension wouldn't have worked as well if two gay actors had been playing those roles, and because they were both straight it made their sexual awkwardness more convincing, more like it might be for two cowboys. 'Exactly. Here are these two lonely people who find themselves through love. Love has no bounds and these two people found a connection in this massive, lonely landscape of Wyoming.'
Presumably he got nasty letters from homophobes.
'Determining what was nasty and what was nice was always going to be hard for me with that movie. But yes, I got an insight into homophobia that I wouldn't normally have encountered.'
Given that he first tasted fame as an 11-year-old when he played Billy Crystal's son in City Slickers, how come he didn't go off the rails in his teens like other child stars, Macaulay Culkin, say, or Drew Barrymore? 'My parents kept my feet on the ground. They had me turn down roles so that I could concentrate on school work.'
They also made him spend the day of his bar mitzvah volunteering at a homeless shelter so that he would appreciate how privileged he was. And yet he feels he did have to struggle to get his parents' attention, because they were so immersed in their work. One of the reasons he wanted to act, he says, was to command their interest and 'be a part of their world'.
Something about Gyllenhaal's intense yet dreamy and deadpan stare suits him to playing mentally disturbed characters, such as Donnie Darko. And according to Robert Downey Jr, who co-starred with him in the serial killer film Zodiac earlier this year, 'he's nice all right, but he's also wet, dark and wild'.
That darker side emerged during the filming of Jarhead. A playful fight with his co-star Brian Geraghty suddenly became serious. 'Something happened and I just started hitting Brian,' he said at the time. On another occasion he was filming a scene in which he was to hold down a fellow actor and throttle him. The choking actor had to hit Gyllenhaal in the face to make him let go. What's with this aggression? 'Yeah there is that side. That is a part of me. Part of me would like to know what I would be like in battle. Have my courage tested. Would I be an altruist or a coward? Would I run away or engage? The engaging is what I would want of myself.'
So he feels frustrated? 'No, I would just love to test myself. I loved the marines. I shaved my head for Jarhead and both my parents were, like, F---! I came back from the boot camp and they were terrified.'
His aggression in that film, he adds, was more about a search for authenticity. 'I like the process of digging for that truth. I try to pay attention to my emotions during the day, bring them to my work. I have sometimes read in a script that my character cries, but not everyone cries when they are unhappy. That's not how people always grieve.'
When he experiences genuine emotions in his own life – anger, grief, love – do they feel less authentic because he has had to fake them in films? 'Hmm. Have I devalued the currency? I tell you, when I fall in love in real life it has felt nothing like I have acted it in the movies.'
Recalling the rumours about him and Reese Witherspoon, his co-star in Rendition, I say: just don't fall in love with your co-star on screen, eh? 'Yeah, well?…' He laughs. 'I haven't had many opportunities.'
He must find it difficult persuading women to go to bed with him. 'I don't think of myself as good-looking. Not at all. When I was a kid I had these huge glasses. I once went to a fancy dress as a Crest toothpaste tube with these huge glasses stuck on. That is how I see myself most of the time. A Crest toothpaste tube with bad eyesight.'
And on that surreal note, it is time to bid the wet, dark and wild Jake Gyllenhaal goodbye. 'Be nice to me,' he says with a grin as he stands up and stretches. 'Actually, I don't know why I said that. You can write whatever you like, just spell my name right.'
