Time travel with Jake Gyllenhaal

Few people get to time travel these days like an actor does - they sign on for a project and before they can say 'there's a hole in the space time continuum', they could find themselves spending five months in leather boots, neck ruffs and a codpiece. Jake Gyllenhaal has time-travelled more than most through his relatively short career, having recreated in often painstaking detail the 50s right through to the present day, and now he's taken an even deeper plunge into world history and is leaving his mark on early medieval Persia (fortunately they speak English so Jake should be ok).


In this post, I will be following Jake through the time portal to show that, even though he's a young thing - a mere 27 years old - he has experienced everything from Sputniks, flares and slinkies to smurfs, illuminescent volkswagons and the moustache.


The 1950s

Jake began his adult acting career thirty years before he was born, a time in which he was inspired by the first venture into space, Sputnik, a world away from the coal mines of West Virginia.


The 1960s

Jake's roles have taken him to the extremes of the 1960s - on the one hand there is Wyoming of 1963, where the only place that two young sheepherders feel able (not free) to discover their feelings for each other is away from society and in the remoteness of the mountains.


Zodiac begins in the 1960s of San Francisco, where lovers freely meet but there are different dangers.


The 1970s

Jake was lucky in the Zodiac - his character was relatively timeless, although Jake described how much he hated having to put on the shirts (reminiscent of the Brokeback shirts). Mark Ruffalo's character fared less well, despite David Fincher's claim that 'I didn't want to make a movie about sideburns. I didn't want to make a movie about plaid and flared pants, bell bottoms, and platform shoes. I didn't want it to be kitsch.'


In this video, at the NYC premiere of Zodiac, Jake said that it was Mark who had to endure the 'chafing plaid pants.' Jake also mentions that he didn't ask his parents for background on the 70s: 'If you remember it, you didn't live it... I guess maybe they lived it.'


In 1970s' Texas, Jake had a lot more to contend with than hunting down serial killers while driving a bright orange car - the 'tache. Jake famously said: 'I spent the entire second half of the movie trying to pull off that mustache, literally and figuratively.'


In Moonlight Mile, Jake wore ill-fitting shoes and a lot of brown.


The 1980s

This is the decade in which Jake took on time travel itself. It is also the decade that sent Jake to the library: 'In terms of style and all that, I went down to the library and looked at all these magazines and read articles about the time. There's not that much you can do with something that is so near. There are words that were different, like people used to use "rad" a lot more!' I regret now that, during the 80s, I never once said 'rad' - but I did go and see Duran Duran in concert and I did have a drink with Echo and the Bunnymen.


The 1990s

Jake was fighting the battles of the 1990s in the deserts of Kuwait, but Jake told Vogue that this decade - Jake's own teenage decade - was all about: 'People who were moved when Kurt Cobain died, slap bracelets, Jenga, CHiPs in syndication.' The films to watch were The Matrix, Being John Malkovich, Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 'which is about being able to love and how actually hard it is to really do that. It may be easy for other people, but it's hard for me; I cried like a fucking baby.'


Kurt Cobain's death was also the excuse for a roadtrip.


Past, Present, Future and Beyond

As for the present and the future and the past.... the Noughts are a work in progress, taking Jake to North Africa, through prison and release, and into the US congress. The future may take Jake into space and to the moon, but then into the past and onto the football fields of the 1960s and 70s. And best not to forget the minarets, domes and palms of that medieval realm of peril, romance and magic which awaits.


Includes pictures from IHJ and Just Jared.