Jake Gyllenhaal 'a little bit Buddhist' (and sweaty). Interviews in Glamour and the Mail. And on his bike...

As if pictures of Jake Gyllenhaal out and about on his shiny Triumph yesterday (10 December) in Beverly Hills weren't enough to wet one's whistle (see below), we also have two new interviews with Jake. As the release of Love and Other Drugs here on 29 December gets ever nearer, the interviews recorded during the second week of November will at last be published. Jake appears in an interview with the Daily Mail online (it's not in the paper itself) today and he's also featured in the January issue of Glamour, which is now on the shelves (at least the mini version). Scans are included in this post - click on them and they shall be embiggened.


Movies are on Jake's mind: ''What's happened to the movies? All those Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy films about love? When I watch Rita Hayworth or Fred Astaire dance I think, why don't we have that any more?... So many films now are all about sex and love,' continues Jake Gyllenhaal, fixing me with his intense blue eyes. 'But you really don't see the two of them coming together. I want love and sex in movies to be different than it has been.'

''There's not a whole lot of actual sex in the film. There is a lot of us talking with our clothes off, beforehand or after, and I think that's more real. You don't have a sheet draped across Annie's chest, because people don't tend to do that, do you know what I mean?' He grins. 'It's uncomfortable when you're naked on set, but I do feel like an old hand at it at this point. I've done some pretty crazy things already. 'My parents taught me to feel comfortable about my body. They told me there's a beauty in whatever you are. Also I feel it's very important to portray love and sex in the right way.' He laughs. 'Besides, in our case, we'd already had faux movie sex in Brokeback Mountain. So we were relatively comfortable.''


''I used to go to the gym. I don't any more. I just like being active, breaking a sweat. If someone says, "Do you want to go and hike this mountain?", I'll just go and do it. I don't have children, so I can still be selfish and say, "I'm going to go and be on my bike for three hours." I ride mostly Trek bicycles - a Madone. I ride in Manhattan. You usually get where you're going faster, but I've gone to many a big meeting sweating, with people thinking I'm a creepy person.''


''Lance Armstrong saw me talking about bikes in a magazine, called me up and said, "You want to go for a ride?" And that was that - we rode. I took lots of caffeine and those energy packets and just went for it. I think I may have been sick the first ride I went on with him. I kept up with him, but I don't think Lance was pushing very hard. I rode L'Alpe d'Huez, which is one of the stages on the Tour de France, and that was a pretty intense climb, one of the best rides I've had in my life. And there's nothing more beautiful than riding through redwoods in Northern California, cutting in and out of thousand-year-old trees.'


'I definitely have an alpha-male aspect to me, because if I see someone up a long way ahead I always try to catch him; but mostly I just like the solitude. It's something my father instilled in me when I was a young boy. In the morning before school he would wake me up and we'd go on runs together. I still run - almost barefoot at the moment - just enjoying being physical, being active and being outside.'

Missing Heath: 'I do miss him...' Gyllenhaal stops mid-flow, looking emotional. 'There was an intimacy that we all shared on that film - I'd never experienced anything like it. It was just us by this river in Calgary for a month, in the middle of nowhere. There were no hotels to stay in, so we lived in trailers out there in the wilds. We would make coffee together in the morning, eat together and sometimes we'd ride horses to work. We were out there alone and all we had was each other.'


Growing up: 'We lived on the east side of LA between Koreatown (a poor ethnic neighbourhood) and Hancock Park (a fashionable area). Both my parents were very socially conscious. Growing up, my mother was always involved in charity work and she would get us involved in places like the homeless shelter... They were black sheep in their families. My mother's parents were doctors. My father came from a very small town in Pennsylvania. All either of them wanted to do was to write and make movies. Our home was like a circus with various people coming in and out. (Oscar-winning director) Steven Soderbergh lived in the room above our garage.'


'Gyllenhaal has particularly fond memories of Paul Newman. 'I was 14 when my mother got to know him as she was writing a screenplay for him. I knew him better from salad dressing, which is the great irony of different generations! My mum had a meeting with him and he said, "Come and meet me on the racetrack, and bring your son." We went and he put me in a race car that was all souped up, drove me onto the skid pan, spun the car around and taught me what not to do. It was extraordinary... I am a little bit Buddhist - in that I believe, in some way, that you choose your family. Convention was never something my family were interested in.''

Glamour interview

Jake is at his most flirtatiously delicious in the interview for Glamour.





Includes pictures from IHJ and scans by WDW.