Jake Gyllenhaal - 'He's got some indefinable what do you call it'

As Jake Gyllenhaal continues to elude us, just like last August, I long to see him shine on another glorious red carpet, centre stage, the movie star. That time will come again (hopefully while we're still young enough to enjoy it). In the meantime, let us travel back through the mists and twists of time, ala Donnie Darko (third favourite time traveller according to UK movie renters), to Jake's first big premiere. October Sky, February 1999, ten years ago, spikey hair.


You could tell at the time that this was a movie about a coalmining community. The reason? The nibbles were served in coal buckets. I love the way Hollywood thinks - premiere the trailer for TDAT in an icebox in LA, shower the red carpet with fake snow. For October Sky, throw soot over everyone (I may have made that bit up, but the coal bucket bit is true - and the rocket-shaped cookies).


(Oak Ridger 1999) 'The loudest squeals for a celebrity were for Jake Gyllenhaal, who stopped to sign autographs among a squad of cheering females, all pretty in black. Gyllenhaal sported a pseudo-spiked hairdo, which set off the twinkle in his expressive eyes... Weightlessness was not the condition felt by guests who ate rocket-shaped cookies, meal-size snacks, and hors d'oeuvres from coal buckets.' I hope people were served good authentic coal mining fodder.' Someone tell me how hair can be 'pseudo-spiked'?


Here is part of the account from Newsday: 'Currently appearing in real life as a freshman at Columbia University, 18-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal begged Universal Pictures brass not to send a limo as transport to the New York premiere of his first major movie, "October Sky," which opened Friday... On premiere night, he emerged from his dorm room to horror. Straight ahead. Amsterdam and 116th Street. Stretcccchhhh. A student of Buddhism who wears prayer beads on his right wrist, he didn't go zen upon spying the limo, but ducked and covered. "I was like, thwacka, thwacka," he said, recreating the running sounds his body made diving into the elongated vehicle hoping nobody would see. "Thwack."'


'Later that week, the studio sends only a black Lincoln Town Car. Even that seems silly for the 13-block drive to a Q & A at the Film Makers Dialogue, a movie lecture series. Wearing an untucked red dressshirt over black jeans, Jake laughs about the absurdity of the cushy car and his might-be-famous situation. After all, though raised in Los Angeles, Jake came back east to find his inner, intellectual New York self. (His mother is from Brooklyn.) "It's odd being 18," he says. "And doing all this."' And he had a cold.


'But it was at his family's table over food that his career first took off - through competing for attention with his sister. "We are a pretty dramatic, outspoken family. You had to do something to be heard and seen," says Jake, who was once a shy, thick eyeglass-wearing child who felt eclipsed by his outgoing older sister, Maggie, also an actor and student at Columbia. "I would have to break out in song just to vie. After a while, it becomes habit."'


'Jake's real life included summer jobs as a busboy and a sous-chef to earn the $1,000 for his yearly contribution to his college fund. Eventually, Jake's parents invited a talent agent to see their son in the high school production of "West Side Story." With representation, Jake was soon auditioning three to four times a week after school, but was repeatedly turned down for parts. "It's hard when the director is silent, and you're giving it all your heart," he says. "After a while you get really disappointed."


'The day of the [October Sky] audition, Jake got into his Volvo, then felt so sick he couldn't drive. It was mononucleosis mixed with the jitters. Weeks later, by the time his agent got him into callbacks, director Joe Johnston ("Jumanji") and producer Charles Gordon ("Field of Dreams") had already seen hundreds of teen actors. Over the summer, Jake and his father worked on the part intensely and something seemed to click during the callback audition. "When he left the room, we said, `That's the guy,'" recalls director Johnston, who described Jake's portrayal as natural and subtle. "He's got some indefinable what do you call it - star quality. He radiates watchability."'


Universal executives were skeptical about casting someone with so little experience. Weeks went by with no decision. One afternoon, he returned home from school and his father said to him: "I really hope you'll go to college." The news had come. He got the part. "I almost dropped dead," Jake says. It would be lying to say he wasn't terrified. "I was coming out of high school theater," he said. "It was a huge jump." Jake could not look to his own school experience to play the boy who taught himself calculus to measure the trajectory of his homemade rockets. "I always hated math. I was never good at science," he says. "It was hard for me to understand that passion." Insight came from watching the real Homer Hickam, now a retired NASA scientist, helping the prop guys work with the model rockets on the set near Knoxville, Tenn. "It was like he was 16 again," Jake says. "I hope my acting can keep me as young as the rockets kept Homer."'


'For now, Jake is bubbling over, for the first time inspired by academics - because of the movie. In the cozy dark of the Lincoln Town Car, he is so transported talking about his studies that he whips Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" out of his knapsack and begins reading a passage, continuing even after the car stops and the chauffeur opens the door. Then the frantic publicist comes screaming because we were late. "Jake, Jake, Jake," she hollers. "We need you now." He closes the book and heads for the bright lights of the movie theater.'

Mrs Dalloway - never leave home without it.


Includes pictures from IHJ.