Jake - 'I'm sucked dry by film and I think I’m fed by theatre'

As Jake no doubt packs his bags to head off to New Mexico to begin filming a new movie for us on Tuesday, this is as good a time as any to remember the success that Jake has had with previous roles, most notably Brokeback Mountain. For Jack Twist, Jake received a multitude of nominations (except, oddly, by the Globes) and, quite possibly, his biggest success was with the British Academy who, on 19 January, awarded Jake Best Supporting Actor, beating the 'Clooney Twins'. I remember that night very well (and a friend returned with an autograph from Jake for me), not least because I was determined that this would be the last such occasion I would miss in person!


As a result of his enthusiastic win, Jake rode high in the appreciation and adoration of the UK's media sites and newspapers. Journalists remembered Jake from his success on the London boards a few years before and the relationship between Jake Gyllenhaal, his British fans and the British media grew stronger. When Jake travelled back to the US, he was seen carefully guarding his BAFTA, which was given its own seat on the plane, next to his. A week after his win, an interview with Jake by the UK journalist Stephen Applebaum appeared in which Jake talked at great length and with great honesty and openness about what movie making meant to him, especially the whole Brokeback Mountain phenomenon, his upbringing, his beliefs and his relationships with the people who shared his film experience with him.


Brokeback Mountain

It's interesting that Jake discovered with Brokeback Mountain that for the first time in his experience the critics became the audience and, wherever Jake or anyone involved in bringing this film to the screen went, critics expressed their own emotive response to Brokeback Mountain. Its mix of controversy and conservatism is an interesting one. Jake talks about why he took on the role of Jack, and suggests that he was not first choice for the role but that it would have been a terrible thing for him if he had not been given the part.

'First, it’s always about how I emotionally, instinctually react to the story. I don’t choose my films as a social or a political move, and that’s not my first motivation ever. I mean, somehow, maybe the way I was brought up and what I consider important is involved in those instincts somewhere, you know what I mean? [Smiles] I know a lot of young actors that didn’t want to do this film, and thank God they turned it down, because they were first choices over me. And maybe their political background and how they were brought up played into their instincts in responding to the material. But all I can say is that when I read it, I got past something and saw what was so beautiful about the film. I wasn’t consciously going, ‘This is really going to rock ‘em and they’re really going to be surprised, and we’re going to really give ‘em a one-two here.’ I was given a one-two by the script [laughs], you know what I mean? I couldn’t not do it.”'


Brokeback and Jarhead 'are the first time I have done anything completely on my own, without asking people what they thought of them and if I should do them or not.'

Jarhead - 'It is a time in my life where I feel these feelings of frustration and anger'

'I don’t think you have to do much as a young man to create frustration [laughs]. You know what I mean? Any type of frustration, be it mental or sexual or whatever. That’s the primary reason why I felt like I wanted to do the role. I felt so strongly about playing it because it is a time in my life where I feel these feelings of frustration and anger, and that feeling of wanting to punch your fist through a wall and not understanding why. What I think I have discovered about the military, in my short and peripheral experience of it, is that they harness those feelings and focus them towards an end. They give them meaning through missions.'


Jake's upbinging - 'I believe that there is good to all of this'

'I think that no matter what I always look for humanity, like I always look for a sense of hope. It can be in the bleakest story but I don’t buy total perversity, utter perversity without hope. I may be naïve but I believe that there is good to all of this, and those are the things that move me. That’s definitely a part of my upbringing. The best part of my upbringing [laughs]. And then the perversity plays a part of the other part of my upbringing. But without the hope, I don’t think anything really, really works; in particular, movies and stories.'

'Those ounces of perversity, or maybe pounds, whatever, varying degrees for everybody, but I just think that we all have had our share of pain as children. Being a child is very hard in this world, no matter how you were brought up, and I can see easily how you could spin that in my case [laughs], but still, no matter what.'


As Jake became more famous and, it seems, in the wake of his BAFTA win, he found assumptions were being made about his childhood and his aspirations - almost like legends were being created to which Jake's words were fitted - such as Paul Newman teaching him to drive and Jake wanting to do carpentry.

'Well, I actually do enjoy carpentry. It might annoy him but unfortunately it’s something I really do actually enjoy, and to me it’s a little offensive if, you know, somebody thinks that it’s like not as exciting a job. Because, personally, I am happiest when I’m building a table for my mom, you know? Which I did, and do, and I love woodwork, you know? Our interests are all varying. I don’t know why I find joy and calm doing that but I do... And yeah, my upbringing: it’s funny how people tinge it and move it however they want to for whatever they need to move it for. People say, you know, ‘Oh, Paul Newman taught you how to drive, right?’ and I say, ‘No, my father really taught me how to drive and he’s getting a really bum rap because one day Paul Newman did take me out to the race track.’ I said that once when I was doing press when I was 16 years old and now that’s all people write. Believe me I was in awe when it happened. But I think people do sometimes, when I talk to journalists or whatever, kind of like to go, ‘Well, it was this way, wasn’t it?’ I don’t know, I don’t understand it completely, but I understand them [sighs]. . . I have been through a lot even just recently. In the past couple of days, it’s been very interesting to hear what people have to say about how I was brought up, because my experience of it was very different.'


On whether Jake is conscious of carrying people's dreams with him: 'I have no sense of anything and you can quote me on that. [Laughs] No, I’m surprised at how much people love Brokeback Mountain [can’t contain his giggles], everything’s a surprise to me, what people feel about different things. It’s amazing how people are responding to different things and what bothers people and what doesn’t. Unfortunately, it seems, I’m always trying to be as honest as I can and, unfortunately, that honesty can be used how anybody wants to use it.'

A mix of Christianity and Judaism

Jake's bar mitzvah was held at a homeless shelter, which, Applebaum suggests, could be too much for a child and jokes that Jews are made to feel guilty enough already. 'I guess so. But no, I have a lot of other things. But yeah, you’re right. Well, because my father was Christian too, you know, I think my parents were always a little unclear in terms of how they wanted to raise us. But actually they were very clear about it. I think they wanted to share everything and all those ideas with us, so when it came around to having a bah mitzvah and doing that, I think they split the opportunity and basically realised that in order to do that, ‘Well, let’s go feed the homeless [laughs]’. Like that would be the most logical religious response to both Christianity and Judaism, so that was it [laughs].'


Why Jake took to the boards in London

'Again, it was like I read the script and it’s an amazing play. It’s a masterpiece. And a masterpiece for someone at the age that I was at doesn’t ever come along. What was interesting is that I don’t think at the time I was like, ‘Oh, it’s in London’, and I never realised what that pressure was, and I think that naivety was a good thing, you know? That play in particular has totally changed my life. John Madden [who directed him and Gwyneth Paltrow in Proof] came to see me in that play, Sam came to see me in that play, consequently four or five other directors that I hopefully will work with in the future saw me in that play, and those opportunities have brought me all the movie opportunities I have gotten. As a movie actor, your representation always says, ‘Don’t do that. Don’t do a play because you could do this or that and make money, and blah, blah, blah.’ But so many more opportunities have come from it. And, I was just saying as I was coming over here, at the time, which is probably a good thing, I don’t think I realised how special of an experience that really was. In fact I remember our stage manager turned to me and Hayden [Christiansen] and Anna [Paquin], like four or five days into the run, and said, ‘Cherish this time because you’ll never have an opportunity or have an experience like this again because it’s really an extraordinary feeling to be such a success that way your first time.’ I remember registering that and being like, ‘OK, time to have fun.’ It was amazing. The next thing I’m going to do will be on stage, without a doubt.'


On the rewards of working on the stage as opposed to in front of the camera: 'I just think I’m fed by it. I’m sucked dry by film and I think I’m fed by theatre. There’s a start and stop to film where you give and you give and you give, and you don’t have that give and take like you do in the theatre, and I think it’s just necessary. I get rid of bad habits, but it just fills me. Right now I have a responsibility to the next film director I work with to get filled up again before I go out on the race track again.' Which director? David Fincher, your director on Zodiac? 'No, I’m working with him now. He’s sapping it right now [laughs]. He does a lot of takes.'


David Fincher - 'I have a real, real growing fondess for David'

'I thought he was a real technician and visualist and that seemed to be the most important thing to him. But as we’ve worked together I feel like he really does like actors, and he knows what’s really good in acting, too. I have a real, real growing fondness for David and his relationship to actors. To work with, though, we do on average 30 takes, and we do have up to 80. But I also think that’s great, too. Every director seems to have a different, especially when they’re really great, a real personality and style of making their film. And they’ve all been so different and so wonderful in all these different ways. I just hope that I’ve taken in as much as I can from them because who knows when the opportunity will come again to work with people like that. I don’t know, it’s kind of amazing.'



On being alone - 'It was nowhere near anywhere I had ever been or knew at all'

'To me I think the most interesting things happen when you sit with yourself and when you’re alone. Like if you really let yourself be that way. When we were in Calvary [on Brokeback Mountain], I was alone for a very long time; I mean not even with Heath. We would get off work and we would be literally in the middle of nowhere, living in trailers, on our own. Sometimes we would get together and all have dinner together, sometimes we’d all be alone. Something about the topography of the spaces I was in, just sometimes even the geography, that it was nowhere near anywhere I had ever been or knew at all, I needed to explore. I needed to explore that territory. You grow up in a city and there’s everything around you all the time, and I don’t think you realise how lonely you are until you get out of there. You know, what I think about Brokeback Mountain is that the reason why these two men fall in love is out of loneliness. Like there’s just nothing more in their lives when they meet and it’s the best thing that happens to them when they meet there. And the same thing, I think, in a weird way, Tony Swofford has to go to that place of almost utter, desperate, horrible loneliness in order to become, in a way, the writer that he became. I don’t know, I just feel like you got to go to those places and somehow, unconsciously, I was there all of a sudden. I don’t know really why I picked those films.'


On growing up as a result of these films

'“Uh, I think it’s just like I’ve grown up [laughs]. I don’t know if it’s a greater sense of self or just feeling a little closer to being able to be an adult, and that is pretty hard in the movie business, you know what I mean? [Laughs] But I feel that way. And working with these people, what I’ve gotten from them as human beings, like yes, Sam Mendes is a brilliant director, and yes, Ang Lee is a brilliant director, and yes, David Fincher is a brilliant director, and yes, Peter Sarsgaard is an amazing actor, and Heath Ledger gives an incredible performance in the film, all those things, but just the interactions that I have with them as human beings, I’ll never forget. I talked to Ang last night and yeah, he was my director and all those things, but he’s a wonderful person. Sam and I spent a ton of time together as friends and that matters to me the most and it’s because we’ve all been through these experiences. I was in my trailer while Ang Lee was doing Tai Chi outside of his every morning, for months, so we shared something special. And that’s the most important thing to me now.'


You can read the rest of this wonderful interview here.
Includes pictures from IHJ