Just call him Jake - 'I have things to say, and I'd like to say them to a lot of people'

My storage of all things Jake has reached near capacity and so I've been having a sort out this evening to see just what I've got and put the scanner to work. We seem to spend quite a bit of time here discussing Jake Gyllenhaal's clothes - what he should wear, what he shouldn't and when he should just go without. So this feature, published in GQ back in June 2004, tickled me because in it Jake comments on the clothes that he's put in. There is, of course, a lot more than that, and around Jake's comments on his clothes are some others on his world. All from an interview in a hotel room amidst 'an explosion of laundry and luggage'.


Of the picture below, for instance, Jake comments: 'I do the H&M inside-out thing. You know, you buy something from there, you don't really love it completely, but you love what it's kind of doing. So you turn it inside out - like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation.'

'A lot of people say, 'You don't look like you're from LA.. I don't know what that means. LA gets a bad rap; Hollywood deserves the bad rap.'


And of Jake's childhood and the illustrious visitors to the family home: 'Yeah, she was Jamie Lee Curtis to everyone else, but when I was like 3 years old, she was Jamie to me... I've known her since I was born. It's definitely different, but it's not like my parents bought me a Mercedes for my first car. It's not that warped sense of the world.' 'My parents fought a lot when I was growing up... They didn't, to my mind, seem to treat each other very well. That affected me a lot. People go, 'Oh, fuck him, his life is so good - I couldn't ask for anything more. It doesn't mean that it wasn't the end of the world when I was 4 years old and my parents were fighting... I have a belief... that pretty much everyone - I don't care how happy they say they are, or how great their supposed upbringing was - everybody has enough pain to draw on from after they're 4... For a long time, I was like, 'Oh, I wish someone I knew died, so I could have something to work with.'

In the next picture, Jake discusses the imposing Cartier watch on his wrist. 'That watch is awesome. It looks heavy, but it's light and it's not too bulky. It felt really great to wear. It came with its own security guard.'


Jake once mentioned that he didn't care for dinosaurs and, speaking as a dinosaur lover, I wanted to know why. Here is a bit more explanation when Jake is talking about his Columbia career: 'I was taking a class in dinosaurs... We had to memorize every bone in every dinosaur. And I remember sitting in this class, like, 'What the fuck am I doing here? I have this huge opportunity in front of me.' So I just went from movie to movie, because I didn't want to go back to school. [My parents] both freaked out about it: 'You gotta finish college, Jake.' And I was like, 'No, I don't.' That was incredibly freeing for me.' (It's a lot more fun excavating dinosaur remains, Jake, honest.)

I know that the red jumper in the picture below is beloved by many. So what did Jake think about it? 'At first I wasn't so into the teeny-tiny Ralph Lauren sweater, but now I am, because it ended up looking really great in this photograph. But, yeah, it's pretty fitted.' I don't think it's just the sweater that ended up looking great in this photograph...


There is an interesting anecdote in the magazine about, what was then, a very recent incident, in which Jake and Kirsten Dunst 'decided to duck in to one of [the Sundance Festival's] makeshift spas for a supposedly relaxing scrubdown. Yet, when it was over, Gyllenhaal walked out and realized he had been duped into this... thing. This promotional, stand-next-to-this-product-and-smile photo op. It was one of the more whorish trade-offs of fame, and when Gyllenhaal recounts the incident the next day over lunch, his expression veers from guilt to confusion to acceptance. He doesn't want to take such blatant advantage of his celebrity, smiling for the camera in exchange for a massage and some free products. But then again... 'Then again,' he says, 'It was a really, really good massage.''


''My desire is not to change who I am,' Gyllenhaal admits with the tentative defiance of the almost famous. 'I don't want to do that right now - I don't want people to not like me. It's just a message I want to put out there. I don't want to be something that I'm not.''

And here you can match your 2004 taste in music to Jake's - I have eight of them on my MP3, but best not to admit which!


'I would really like people to know how to pronounce my last name. Correctly. Everywhere.'

Pictures from GQ, June 2004. Click and, as always, they shall be much bigger.