'It was not just that Jake Gyllenhaal was doing the part, whom I'd been in love with since he was three years old. The first time I saw Jake he was running across my in-laws' back lawn to the pool, because he was best friends with my twin nieces, and I remember turning to my sister in law and asking, "Who is that beautiful child?" He just was magical, always, so generous and open. I remember the sixth grade show they had at the end of the year. There he was, this sixth grade boy, and he stood up and sang "The Music of the Night" fromPhantom of the Opera. What a song for an eleven year old! I thought, this kid is a star. Whether or not he's going to be a movie star, who knows, but he's a star in the world, because he's luminous.'
'We do have it on video! My in-laws have it. It's just crazy, we looked at it one Thanksgiving, still before he became a star, and I thought it all over again. So, for me to be acting with him — and also with Buddy [Swayze], who in many ways was a hero of mine, because he'd been the first person from our acting class who'd really made it, and who'd been a big influence in teaching me to love and accept myself as a character actress — the role became kind of true to life. It was a magical experience doing that film, it really was.'
'This sequence in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN comes very late in the movie. After learning that the love of his life, Jack Twist, has died, Ennis Del Mar (so beautifully incarnated by Heath Ledger) has come to pay his respects at the family homestead. The emotional crux of the movie has been Ennis’ internalizing his feelings, and not really expressing them – even with Jack, he would make only so much of an exception. Visiting Jack’s childhood room, gut-wrenching emotions come to the fore for Ennis – but, wordlessly, and without flashbacks to their time together or even audio echoes. It all plays out on Ennis’ heretofore stoic face, and when we see tears gathering, it is heartbreaking. The sequence builds powerfully with the nearly-silhouetted staging of the scene in the room’s closet where the full force of the love lost hits Ennis. The postscript to the sequence does include dialogue, but it’s what’s not being said that moves Ennis – and me, every time.'
'At the party — also attended by a scruffy Jake Gyllenhaal and “Gossip Girl” star Chace Crawford — the three Olsens “held court at a corner table all night” and toasted Elizabeth’s movie with Bear Flag Wine, an eyewitness told us. Though Elizabeth is quickly entering star territory, she hasn’t mastered one celebri-feat: wearing sky-high heels all night. At the party, she “took off her very high heels and slipped on a pair of moccasins,” our source said. Gyllenhaal, meanwhile, also kept things casual, wearing cargo pants, a long-sleeve tee and glasses to the screening, then skipping the after-party. "I don’t think anyone knew he was there,” the source said. “He clearly did not want to be seen.”'Last night, it was the turn of 'The Skin I Live In', which stars Antonio Banderas. At the same screening was David Lynch.
'Proulx doesn’t mold characters after any real-life people, and when pressed, says only that it’s possible she draws inspiration from what’s happening around her. For example, the characters of Ennis and Jack in “Brokeback Mountain” may have sprung from some unconscious desire to counteract the “John Wayne, right-wing” mindset where she lives in Wyoming that cowboys can only be and act a certain way, she says. “I realize stories I’ve written are contrary to the culture and have a touch of the corrective about them,” she says. “I’m not saying that’s how it is, I’m saying, perhaps.”'
'On the insurance nightmare in taking Hollywood star Jake Gyllenhaal into the wild: "I never understand this. I don't know why one man's life is more valuable than another. I will commit 120 per cent of my energy to keeping anyone alive, I don't care if they're a superstar or whatever." On taking Gyllenhaal into the wild: "He was nervous but at the same time he said don't hold back. He was a dude."'
'In End Of Watch, I play a wife who doesn’t have her own storyline outside of being married to Jake Gyllenhaal. That freaked me out a little bit, because I thought, “Oh, this might be really bad,” but I feel like the wives in that movie, even though they don’t have their own storyline, they ground the entire thing, because if these men are putting their lives on the line in a vacuum, it feels like a videogame. It doesn’t matter. If you see their lives outside of that, it means something. There’s a reason for those kinds of roles, in a lot of cases.'
'It’s pretty tough. The script is really startling, but then surprisingly, you find moments of levity in places where you wouldn’t, necessarily. I was thinking about that, like, “Oh God, this is my first movie where there’s no comic angle, no infusion of comedy.” But then you get on set and you think, “Oh no, real life, when it feels honest, is really funny and really light, as much as it can be really dramatic.” I was surprised at that. It’s a startlingly brutal script, but I think there are moments of levity.'Do read the rest of this interview, there is a lovely tribute to Michelle Williams' work in Brokeback Mountain.
