A catch up in words, videos and images - Jake Gyllenhaal honours casting directors, talks Prisoners and Nightcrawler and The Hand

Jake Gyllenhaal and his hand have been busy over the last few days moving between Los Angeles and New York City, attending more honorary events and screenings of Prisoners.

Firstly, here's a great video of Jake discussing Prisoners and much, much more with Gold Derby editor Tom O'Neil.



This week we also heard a little bit more about the mirror attack and Nightcrawler thanks to Movie.com:

"We were working a scene and it was an intense scene, and I just went for it," he told us. "It's going to be in the movie, too, which is pretty awesome. The feeling that you left it all out on the field, ya know? That you even put a little of your own blood into a project." In the film Gyllenhaal plays a young man caught up in the seedy, underground world of freelance crime journalism, and while his mirror-punching exploits will indeed make it into the film, he added that you may not see his character punch the mirror in the shot, but you will see it shatter.'

"It's so hard to explain this character," Gyllenhaal said. "He's all over the map in this way that is so fun to play. We were experimenting a lot because it's such a brilliant screenplay -- probably one of the best I've ever read. Dan Gilroy wrote it, and [the character] is sort of a modern version of a real entrepreneur. This sort of personification of this idea that success is the ultimate goal regardless of anything. He's charming, and at the same time calculating. Why he is all these things is definitely underneath that [mirror-punching] moment in a way, but he's just so complex. It was real fun to play as an actor."

Thanks to IHJ for the photos from last Monday's Casting Society of Artios Awards which honoured casting directors. Jake clearly enjoyed his speech:

“It’s really nice to see casting directors get up here and be more nervous than I’ve ever seen them before,” Gyllenhaal told the packed International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton. “Now you know how it feels! It’s perversely wonderful to watch you shake. I’m actually kind of getting off on it.”

Jake also said: 'On behalf of me, my sister (actress Maggie Gyllenhaal), my brother-in-law, who's an actor (Peter Sarsgaard), my mother and my father. We could not have done it without you.'

On 22 November, Jake took part in a special showing of Prisoners for the Envelope Screening Series. You can watch the video here. At the screening, Jake talked a little about Loki's characteristic blinking tic: "I get these strange instincts when I'm reading something," Gyllenhaal said. "And one of those things in this movie, when I read the script … I had this feeling of this blinking. I don't know really where it came from. I try a lot of things with Denis. He allows that. It is why he's so extraordinary. He creates a space that's safe, which is why I think he got such incredible actors to be a part of this process." Gyllenhaal added: "His love of actors and his ability to say, 'I'm going to give you the space to create in there; I'm not going to manipulate you in the wrong way,' I think made us all come along." When Gyllenhaal pitched the idea of Loki's tic to Villeneuve at a diner, "[Villeneuve] said, 'If we use it enough and it has a reason, if we find a reason for this, then I love it.' And we did."'

And finally

We've had this before but IMDb has released the trailer for Enemy on YouTube this week and so it seems like a good time to show it again:

Here is a brief clip of Jake at the recent Oscars' Governors Awards: