Jake Gyllenhaal: 'Now I'm having fun on the inside!' Families, friends and how Duncan Jones 'is the next great director'

A tweet has suggested that Jake Gyllenhaal may be in Montreal this weekend, possibly for the Grand Prix. However, I'm watching the race as I write this and while I can indeed confirm that there are several thousand spectators there, plus some cars, I have not yet spotted Jake or seen him tutt about the state of Mark Webber's tyres. But one tweet does not a song make and so Jake may instead be spending the day making chairs for his tables. Or downloading music (and paying for it - see below). Incidentally, well done Lewis!


With many thanks to Carol for another article from Ireland, here are excerpts from 'The Persian Principle', in which Jake talks about his family and his best friend who - very handily - is a chef. First, Maggie: '‘We’ll call each other up,’ says Jake. ‘And try to figue out where we are. Maggie will be in London shooting Nanny McPhee and I’ll have been there last month. It’s crazy. My family can’t keep track of each other. But she’s amazing. I just love her so much. She’s an incredible sister and an incredible mom. It was amazing when she got the Academy Award nomination because I had seen her do all that incredible work and I knew how good she was.’


‘My best friends are all people I’ve grown up with,’ he says. ‘My best friend in the world is a chef and he lives in Martha’s Vineyard. He and I are pretty athletic so we travel together and go biking and that sort of thing. I’m not a clubbing person; I like to be outside in the daylight. I download music all the time and pay for it.’


‘I grew my hair for six months for the movie,’ he tells me. ‘ And then my trainer and I went through a rigorous shampooing and conditioning regime. Then I started feeling sexy in preparation for the role. Becuase I don’t really care about what kind of muscles I have. I feel sexy when I feel good inside. Or when my hair is long. Whatever.’


The contrast of Prince of Persia and Brokeback: '‘When I think back to working on something like Brokeback Mountain with Ang (Lee) and Heath (Ledger), it couldn’t be more different’, says Mr Gyllenhaal. ‘That’s an intimate set, in every way possible I guess. Working for Jerry Bruckheimer nothing is intimate but it has its unique energy. When you drive past miles of set in the middle of the desert and there are hundreds of cars that belong to crew members who’ve been working on this thing for hours already, it’s like being the star athlete arriving at the Olympics. It feeds you. It gets your adrenalin going. And it’s a huge responsibility; every move you make affects one hundred other people.’


‘Generally speaking,’ says Gyllenhaal. ‘It’s important for me to make choices that make people feel uncomfortable. I mean, I’m an actor, so I want to be liked. I don’t necessarily enjoy bothering people but I do think it’s important. If you are trying to please everybody you can only be miserable.’

‘I didn’t even make the connection between the game and the script at first,’ he admits. ‘But once I did I spent time playing it. I’d call the stunt guys and trainers in and show them something to see if we could do it. They’d be like ‘Well, we don’t think you can do it, but we’ll find a guy.’ How often do you get to do that at work?’


‘I’ve already made two more movies since we wrapped,’ he says. ‘One with Ed Zwick and another with Duncan Jones who has just blown me away. I think very soon everybody is going to realise that Duncan Jones is the next great director from his generation.’

'So he’s back to being a serious young man, then? ‘Yeah, but now I’m having fun on the inside.’'



And finally...

Follow the link to another (not embeddable - or at least not workingly embeddable) interview with Jake.


Many thanks to IHJ for the pictures of Jake having fun. Scans from WDW. Thanks Carol!