Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum melt the ice

At the New York premiere for Beautiful Creatures this week, Interview magazine asked the lovely Emmy Rossum for embarrassing memories from when she was 16 years old:

"I was filming The Day After Tomorrow, it was my first big film, and I had to kiss Jake Gyllenhaal, so I was really nervous. The night before, I got a big zit and, stupidly, I picked at it, so then it was bigger and infected and had a scab over it. Jake called it my ‘third eye,'" Rossum recalled. Her 16-year-old self was crushed —"He's never going to want to kiss me now!"

In an earlier interview for USA Weekend (the link now no longer exists except in the WDW archives), we were told: 'This 19-year-old is no wallflower. When she met hunky star Jake Gyllenhaal one morning a few years ago, Rossum pulled a move worthy of the Phantom. "I went over to him and said, 'Look, I know it's 9 a.m., but is it OK if I kiss you?' " Rossum recalls. When he consented ("He said, 'It's never too early!' "), she obliged. "I knew if I didn't do it, it would seem like I was scared. And I wanted to kiss him. He's very, very cute."'

There's more from A Girl's World on what it was like to work with Jake.

'Fantastic! He’s a fantastic guy. He’s very intelligent. It was funny because I was kind of like the only girl on the set. There was Mark Gordon, our producer, Roland, Jake, Dennis Quaid and me. So, he’s like the big brother I never had. So it was really nice. We also work in kind of a similar way. We both put a lot of emphasis on preparation but then we get there and we kind of let it rip and are intuitive in a lot of ways within the bounds of the character and the arc. I think we work really well together.... He’s quite goofy in reality. I think we were so cold and wet and shivering most of the time that nobody had enough energy to pull pranks after running through that tank 500 times in one day with Roland going ‘do it again’! But he’s very much positive. He has a lot of positive energy.'

There's another account of the audition with less kissing: 'I definitely auditioned. I went in and sat on the bench next to all the other girls that were auditioning. I wasn’t given any kind of special treatment by any means. I got a meeting with Roland and Mark, went in and read for them, got a screen test with Jake, went in and I did that. I knew that that screen test was the moment when I had to prove myself. That’s when you’ve gotta show it. You’ve gotta bring it. I think that anybody can run through water but not necessarily anybody can run through water while bringing the heart and emotion to the character.'

As for making chemistry: 'There was no choice for me. It was gonna be there. It also wasn’t difficult. He’s terribly attractive. So it wasn’t like the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my whole life but, at the same time, I think the heat had to be there. Somebody had to melt the ice! (laughter).'

Thanks to IHJ for the last new old picture from the Berlin photocall for The Day After Tomorrow.

My review of Lincoln on MovieBrit.