Jake Gyllenhaal and the kind of actors 'who should be giving advice' - Kevin Spacey, Chris Cooper

Completely accidentally, and rather coincidentally, the air of academia continues to filter through WDW - albeit in a rather foggy mix. The reason for this is that Kevin Spacey, one of the University of Oxford's new visiting profs, is in town.


Yesterday he gave his inaugural lecture on contemporary theatre and the event was a sell-out. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this event (because I was unwilling to sell body parts to get hold of one of those prized tickets), but I heard from a friend who did manage to get in, through fair means or foul, that Kevin moved the attention from himself towards young, upcoming actors in Britain today and that he answered an enormous amount of questions. He was a hit.


So, it would seem churlish not to do a post today on Kevin Spacey and his connection to a certain young actor, whose career most definitely is set on a stellar path - Jake Gyllenhaal. As befits this site, the link is tenuous and remote at best, but I don't like that to stop me.


First off, Kevin Spacey was a presenter at the 2006 MTV movie awards, during which Jake was awarded with Best performance for Jack Twist and shared with Heath the award for Best kiss. Jake posed with a number of stars backstage that evening and my favourite pictures are those with Jake and Kevin Spacey, whom one must admire enormously for his committment to reinvigorating London's much loved Old Vic.


Another connection is a favourite director of Jake's: Sam Mendes. Kevin Spacey won an Oscar for his part in American Beauty, which was directed by Sam. Jake coud have acted with Kevin as he auditioned to get a part in this film, as Ricky Fitts. But, as history tells us, Jake was unlucky in this case - possibly too young - and the role went to Wes Bentley (who also acted with Heath Ledger in Four Feathers). And continuing the connection, American Beauty also starred Chris Cooper, who acted with Jake in October Sky and in Jarhead.


Jake has made no secret that he learns from such (relatively) veteran actors as Chris Cooper. Jake told Backstage: 'The best piece of advice I feel like I got from another actor was [from] Chris Cooper when we were doing October Sky. He said to me, 'Just have no regrets.' And I think that probably gets you through the good times and the bad. When you have no regrets and you're feeling low, you can say, 'You know what? I've given it everything I've got.' I think about that every time I'm in any scene. I would love every director to come to me and say, 'You think you got it? You want to try anything else?' So I could finally have the final say before we move on. I love it when a director asks me if I'm good, because I've had a choice in it. There are no regrets. Again, I got this advice from Chris Cooper, and I think Chris Cooper is the kind of person who should be giving advice. So he's giving advice through me.' I suspect that Jake would feel similarly about Kevin Spacey.


This seems like a good time to post these two videos from a Jarhead red carpet. During the first we can see Jake and hear Sam Mendes discuss Jarhead and, in the second, we have Jake talking about what it was like to work with Sam.





Includes pictures from IHJ, Getty and links.