Jake's progress
Growing up in a showbiz family, Jake Gyllenhaal has gone on to become a sought-after and versatile actor, melting hearts as a sensitive cowboy in Brokeback mountain and portraying a disaffected soldier in jarhead. Here he talks about love, life and his new sci-fithriller
Words | James Mottram
Portrait | Nino Munoz
POLAR BEARS. WALRUSES. KILLER WHALES. Not your normal guests for a 30th-birthday party. But then Jake Gyllenhaal is arguably not your normal host. The actor has led a surreal existence since he came to prominence in Donnie Darko a decade ago. So celebrating the end of his 20s with an Arctic adventure, swimming in sub-zero temperatures, would seem entirely in keeping with everything that’s gone before it. “I wanted to do something that terrified me,” he shrugs. Suddenly, the thickness of his beard becomes clear: it’s insulation against the cold.
It’s hardly the first time he’s braced the elements. In 2004’s eco-disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow, Gyllenhaal took on global warming. More recently, he faced a storm – albeit of the publicity kind – after dating country singer Taylor Swift, even buying her an $11,000 vintage Gretsch guitar signed by country star Chet Atkins as a 21st-birthday gift. Their union lasted two months, Gyllenhaal reportedly ending it after being “uncomfortable” with all the media scrutiny. Such is life in Hollywood, particularly when you can count Reese Witherspoon and Kirsten Dunst as old flames.
At least he is at peace with getting older. “I feel good about it,” he says, kicking back in a New York hotel suite. “You pass through different stages. I guess different movies that I’ve done are representations of those times in my life, which is odd. That doesn’t happen to many people, where they get to grow up in movies.”
Still, it’s hard to imagine Gyllenhaal as entering his fourth decade. There’s still something boyish about him. Could be that he’s been the pin-up for disaffected youth for so long. If the pinnacle was his mentally unstable high schooler in Donnie Darko, it led to a glut of others, from his grief-stricken teen in Moonlight Mile to his store clerk who considers himself the incarnation of Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield in The Good Girl. But films like post-war drama Brothers and serial-killer tale Zodiac have reflected an older, wiser Gyllenhaal. Does he feel more of a veteran? “Acting for 15 years is a good enough time but I’m not a veteran. I am accumulating experience. I’m becoming clear about what I want to be involved in, and who I want to be involved with.”
In the case of his new film, Source Code, it was director Duncan Jones that drew him to the project. Jones, the son of rock legend David Bowie, made his 2009 debut with the superlative sci-fiMoon. “That was what made me want to work with him,” says Gyllenhaal. “He rightfully holds the badge of one of Britain’s new talents.” With Jones afforded five times the budget he had on Moon, this blend of Twelve Monkeys and Groundhog Day is this spring’s must-see movie. Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown man on a Chicago commuter train, just eight minutes before a bomb is about to kill everyone on board. Instructed to uncover the identity of the bomber, Stevens must relive this brief time span over and over – dying each time, then re-emerging in the host’s body – until he solves the mystery. “I take the audience on a journey that all the people around this character can’t see,” says Gyllenhaal, starting to tie himself up in existential knots. “It’s hard to explain!” No kidding.
It sounds as much of a head-spin as Donnie Darko. “It sort of is,” he replies excitedly. “But Donnie Darko posed more questions than it answered. This poses questions and answers them. Also, there’s this odd sort of hum to most of Duncan’s work, and it really gets into your brain.”
Like Jones, Gyllenhaal knows what it’s like to be a child in tune with the entertainment business. From being godson to Jamie Lee Curtis to receiving his first driving lesson from Paul Newman, his upbringing was seasoned by celebrity. His Swedish father, Stephen Gyllenhaal, is a director, notably of Waterland with Jeremy Irons and Paris Trout with Dennis Hopper. His mother, Naomi Foner, is a screenwriter, Oscar-nominated for the 1988 film Running on Empty, which starred River Phoenix. “I grew up on movie sets and in a family of storytellers,” he says. “Our house was like a circus, with artists, writers and film-makers coming in and out. We even had a room above the garage rented by Steven Soderbergh.”
Encouraged to express himself creatively, one piece of advice from his father stuck in his mind: any artist should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. “As long as you do that, you’ll be on the right track,” he says. Still, he was not encouraged to act. After he played Billy Crystal’s son in his 1991 debut, City Slickers, his parents restricted the number of films he made as he was at school (though he and older sister Maggie appeared in their father’s 1993 film A Dangerous Woman).
He calls his early desire to act “pure, utter naïve ambition”, and there was evident rivalry between him and his sister. At the time of Donnie Darko – in which Maggie featured as Donnie’s sister – their on-screen enmity was for real. Later Gyllenhaal had a bust-up with his sister’s real-life partner, actor Peter Sarsgaard, while on the set of Gulf War drama Jarhead. “I was like, ‘Why am I doing this movie?’” recalls Sarsgaard. “Now we’re close. But at that time, we were ready to go at it.”
Perhaps it was all just magnified by the Hollywood lens. As a teenager, Gyllenhaal followed his sister to Columbia University, but quit after completing two-thirds of a course in Eastern religions and philosophy presided over by Professor Robert Thurman (Uma’s father). In the year Maggie graduated, he dropped out. “I had gone to school to be intellectual,” he says, “but I’m happier when I’m acting. But I don’t want to be seen as an icon for college drop-outs.” In the past, he even urged fans to support College Summit, a charity that helps students on low incomes. “We were brought up to be socially conscious. It should all be about giving something back.”
A keen environmentalist, he campaigned on behalf of Rock the Vote to inspire his peers to vote in the 2004 presidential elections. He also participated in a campaign for the American Civil Liberties Union. But he’s cautious about standing on his soapbox for too long: “It frustrates me when actors talk politics. I make choices in my movies that I think are political. I try to say things with what I do. Rightly or wrongly, young actors have too much power.”
Certainly this is true. Look at this year’s Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair, and there is Gyllenhaal on the cover with Anne Hathaway (his co-star from Love and Other Drugs), Ryan Reynolds and James Franco. These are the new breed of Hollywood power players, though Gyllenhaal is reluctant to admit it. He recalls an event he attended for last year’s blockbuster video game adaptation Prince of Persia, in which he took the title role. “Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage were there. And I was standing with them, thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’”
Prince of Persia brought in $335 million around the world. Factor in that The Day After Tomorrow grossed over half a billion dollars, and he has every reason to stand alongside those A-listers. He’s even gained awards attention – an Oscar nomination for Brokeback Mountain, in which he played a sexually confused rodeo star.
But the idea of being a leading man doesn’t sit easily with him. In his mind, if he’s going to be a lead, it’s not going to be in the straightforward heroic mould. “I want there to be dimension to the characters I play,” he says. “I think about Dustin Hoffman and the performances he gave and still does – like in Kramer vs. Kramer.”
Maybe Gyllenhaal will never be the full-on movie star, like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, as he’s neither conventionally good-looking nor too comfortable in the spotlight. He admits he does his best to block out the extraneous noise that comes with being a young – well, 30-year-old – actor, comparing the hullabaloo to the seductive Sirens of Greek mythology. “You’ve got to plug your ears, tie yourself to the mast and beg the people you love not to untie you.” Now that’s sound advice.
Source Code is out now
