Updated: Jake Gyllenhaal arrives back at LAX. And 'thirsty for life' and still making dining room tables (and talking about sex - a lot)

Update: Jake Gyllenhaal arrives back at LAX today ahead of presenting Natalie Portman with A Desert Palm Achievement Award at Palm Springs on Saturday. I'm delighted to say that Jake brought a lovely new jumper with him. Please note how I'm not mentioning the beard. Source.


On with the post...

Jake Gyllenhaal attempted to blend in to the commuting masses on the NYC subway again today. Unfortunately, Jake failed for two reasons: a) extraordinary hotness and b) sunglasses. Texting on a subway/tube while wearing sunglasses is not your average commuter behaviour. It takes years of movie stardom training to pull it off. Meanwhile, reminding us of hairier times, Jake is on the cover of Singapore's issue of August. It's the motoring special but I don't think that's relevant. Except if you like motoring.


Last weekend, Jake made an appearance in the Times. I've managed to get my hands on the interview and it's another goodie. Here are some choice snippets. Obviously, it starts with sex. One almost thinks that Love and Other Drugs must have invented it.

'“What you’re looking at when I’m on screen doing it, is not actually the way I do, well, what I do,” says the 30-year-old LA native and potent screen star (Jarhead, Brokeback Mountain), snickering quietly as he analyses the manifold differences between his screen romping and the private activities that unfold in the boudoir chez Gyllenhaal. “I know it’s hard for people to believe this, but if you asked me if I spend time thinking about how exactly my character orgasms, the answer would be yes!”'


When reminded of having turned down Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers almost at the last minute because of its nudity, Jake argues that Love and Other Drugs is completely different, as indeed is he now. “Well, when I think about two people falling in love, I think about how they spend at least half their time not in their clothes,” he says, grinning broadly. “So this is just the fortunate, or unfortunate, part of the storytelling process. Plus, I think I now feel a little more comfortable in my own skin.”'


Here's some description of Jake from the interview: 'Wearing faded denims and a baggy blue sweater, he kicks back in the leather armchair of a Central London hotel and conducts our conversation from a reclined position that could almost be described as catatonically relaxed. His eyes are the prize, enormous Bambi-blues, encircled by dense chimney-sweep lashes, and he rolls them painfully when I mention his many beefcake sequences (pecs out, biceps flexed) in the recent blockbuster Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (“Let’s just say that I didn’t get to cut that movie together, if you know what I mean?”). Or he will focus them intently when firing off a fusillade of his own curious questions, including “If your wife were to leave you, would it tear you apart?” and “Did you have an open heart when you declared your love?”'

Love popped up: '“When you have real love,” he says, coyly avoiding eye contact, perhaps for the first time, “regardless of the complications or the things that surround it, or the issues that might threaten it, you should hold on to it. And if you’re not in a relationship and you want it, you should search for it, or at least believe in it!”'


Back to sex: '“Before each scene we talked about the things that turned us on, and that didn’t. So sometimes the things that happened in the scene were what Ed and Annie thought were sexy, and I didn’t. And sometimes there was different combinations.” An alleyway tryst in particular, that might have been more physically elaborate in the hands of Hathaway and Zwick, was taken back to basics by Gyllenhaal. “They wanted us to do it in different positions,” he says. “But I was like, ‘Look! We’re in an alleyway, it’s already dirty enough as it is, let’s just do it regularly!’"'

'He talks about Brokeback at length, and with a solemnity that inevitably reflects the loss of his co-star, Ledger, after a prescription drug overdose in January 2008. When I ask him if it’s odd to be discussing his work with Ledger on that film when the actor is no longer alive, his head drops and he says sadly, “I think ‘odd’ is the wrong word for it.” He snaps out of it, though, for the contemplation of his future, and for his forthcoming role in Source Code, the latest sci-fi feature from Duncan Jones (Moon). “It’s about a guy who wakes up in another man’s body and has to figure out how he got there. It’s pretty cool, actually!”'


'We race through a final quick-fire round. Yes, he still makes furniture (dining room tables mostly). No, he’s not competitive with sister Maggie. And, yes, he’s keen to always do on screen what’s least expected of him. But what is it, I wonder, that drives him? When he wakes up in the middle of the night, what’s on his mind? “When I wake up in the middle of the night it usually means that I’m thirsty,” he says, before adding, with the biggest, widest, cheesiest grin of the day, “But I’m actually thirsty for life”'

Includes pictures from IHJ.