Jake Gyllenhaal
Jake Gyllenhaal
Jacob Benjamin "Jake" Gyllenhaalis an American actor. A member of the Gyllenhaal family and the son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Gyllenhaal began acting as a child with a screen debut in City Slickers, followed by roles in A Dangerous Womanand Homegrown. His breakthrough performance was as Homer Hickam in October Skyand he garnered an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Male Lead for playing the title character in the indie cult hit Donnie Darko, in which...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth19 December 1980
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I have an overactive brain, and as a result of that, I can really get in my own mind. So I like to try and exercise it to the point of exhaustion.
In work, never have any regrets and always leave everything on the field.
I promise that, one day, everything's going to be better for you.
To me Donnie Darko was about adolescence. And about how, as soon as you start to grow up and you sort of move out into the world, you realize everything is so trippy. That anything can be anything.
It's funny to me that people find other people getting coffee really interesting, or walking their dog in the dog park.
As a producer, you have an opportunity to see the whole and bring people together.
I'm more Baskin-Robbins style myself.
Even as an actor, I think like a storyteller. My parents raised us to look at the script.
My parents taught me as a kid: do your work. Do it well. Try as hard as you can, whatever it is. It will one day, for the long [run], it will make some sort of change somewhere.
As an actor, no matter what, you're at the whim of so many other people all the time.
I fooled around with Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams got pregnant.
But you need to strive to try and communicate and try and change things in a similar way. And then people can think that's pretentious or whatever, but it's your life's work, and you've decided that. That's what they made us believe. So we have a pretty high standard, which is at times great and at times not.
'Brokeback Mountain' takes all your conceptions of America, and the Western, and cowboys, and sexuality, and love, and it stirs them all up.
I think, when someone say, "When did you feel like an actor?" it's those moments when I feel like, "I'm an actor, wow." That's an extraordinary moment for me. So it's not like I walk around going, "I'm an actor."