Keeping up to date with Jake Gyllenhaal - BAFTAs, Santa Monica, AIAF, Prisoners, Prince of Persia, This is Our Youth and more!

Last weekend, London was soaked in torrential rain and sleet - that can mean only one thing: BAFTAs. And while Jake Gyllenhaal was not in attendance this year (probably just as well because when I saw Jake on the famously soapy BAFTA red carpet back in 2007, it took a good week before I could rid myself of lingering hypothermia), his Prisoners co-star was, the Well-Voiced Hugh Jackman. Hugh might not have beaten Daniel Day Lewis in the race to the Best Actor Gong but he did provide a very pleasant distraction from Helen Mirren's new pink hairdo. I don't want to say anything too harsh about the pink do because I still feel a little bit of guilt for yelling at her to get out of the way back in 2007 when she chose to linger right in front of Jake. Obviously this is understandable but it did little for my view.

   

You can read about my experience of the 2007 BAFTAs in strictly unnecessary detail here. The shaky nature of some of my photos can be blamed on extremely localised seismic activity. With Well-Voiced Hugh busy in London, this no doubt left Jake with a bit of leisure time and so last weekend Jake was seen arriving at a hotel in Santa Monica. Was he in LA for the Mumford and Sons Grammy Victory, I wonder...? Many thanks to IHJ!

   

But while the filming seems remarkably low key, this week we got a very good look at Jake in character as Detective Loki when he was snapped being given the Heimlich Manoeuvre.

   

Filming, though, continues apace and very politely.

   

Otherwise, on the filming front, we have the little piece of news that the music is being recorded for An Enemy at the moment and it involves 'scary strings'.

Arts in the Armed Forces

Back in November, we were lucky to have our very own reporter, Lisa, at the Arts in the Armed Forces event in NYC, which Jake attended and gave a reading at. You can read Lisa's exclusive report here. This week, Lisa emailed me further photos from the event which not only show Jake but also Lisa and Ted! Jake is in full Face Pet disguise... It is well worth keeping an eye on the website for further photos. Thanks so much, Lisa!

  

 

King of Persia

The King of Persia has been speaking about the Prince of Persia. Richard Coyle reveals here that he and Jake are still good friends. With this brief interview, the happy memories come flooding back, a fair few of them involving ostriches. 'I did a play in the West End called 'Proof' with Gwyneth Paltrow, and then John Madden - the director - made a movie of it with Gwyneth Paltrow. And Jake played Hal [Harold Dobbs], my part. So Jake had been to see the play and we chatted. We sort of bonded over it. When we met again on 'Prince of Persia' there was a kind of dynamic of older brother, younger brother. Probably just because of that but also because I had played his part and he'd come and watch me do the original. I suppose there was a mutual respect and that already helped us together. And we have a lovely dynamic now, we still speak often.' Click and this pic shall be much embiggened.

  

And finally...

Stephanie has kindly uploaded new old pictures from a photoshoot for Jake's appearance in the West End production This is Our Youth back in 2002. There are lots more there, so thanks to IHJ.

 

Jake Gyllenhaal on Extra and more images and videos - End of Watch, If There Is and more

Tomorrow End of Watch premieres officially at TIFF - a big day - and so, with our best wishes to everyone involved with the film, here's a catch up of some of today's new Jake news. There is a lot going on each day now with so many projects on the boil! Firstly, Collider has revealed a new photo of Jake Gyllenhaal from End of Watch, possibly the most dramatic picture we've had so far. Click and it shall be embiggened.

There is also a brand new TV spot. If the link below doesn't work then you can also see the video here.


End of Watch - 'Truth' Exclusive TV Spot

TrailerParkToo | Myspace Video

More photos have also been released from If There Is... (here via and with thanks to IHJ)

Jake has also put in an appearance on Extra with Ben Lyons:



With thanks to BBMISwear for the heads up, it looks as if Jake will be appearing on Kelly and Michael (Regis and Kelly that was) on the morning of 20 September - and possibly on the Today Show on 14 September. I'm also grateful to BBMISwear for the link to this old video of Jake from during the days of another play, This Is Our Youth. In it Jake is awarding an award with Anna Paquin at the Evening Standard Film Awards in London - over ten years ago, in March 2010.

Catching up - Jake Gyllenhaal victim of yet another bizarre poll

The Indian Summer is about over. I can tell because my head is about to blow off my shoulders thanks to a horrible cold. Nevertheless the Gyllenworld continues to turn with sightings of Jake Gyllenhaal in the theatres, coffee shops, trains and gyms of NYC. With thanks to Susan for the heads up, it's very possible that Jake will continue his stay at least until 26 October when Grassroots, the film by Jake's father Stephen, will screen at Jake and Maggie's old college Columbia University. The photo below is suitably theatrey, showing Jake in London in those This Is Our Youth days.

While Jake's eyebrows could win prizes - as I'm sure you'll agree looking at these new old photos from IHJ - Jake has been slightly less successful of late in the awards although, judging by how little Jake has been in the public eye in recent months, I think he's done pretty well. Jake didn't win a Scream, thanks to some show called Doctor Who (never been the same since the Tom Baker days). But who cares about that when you have another of those glorious polls that demonstrate that Jake is on our minds.

In this latest poll, Jake has been voted as one of the favourite celebrities to squish up to on a flight. It doesn't specify which flight although, obviously, a transatlantic flight would be far preferable to a hop across the English Channel during which you're lucky if you get a biscuit, let alone the chance to snuggle up to some unsuspecting movie star. The poll also seems to presuppose that we're all flying First Class, which is fine by me. Jake got 21% of the vote (although how many people voted is as big a mystery as why the veggie option on a flight is always tikka misala).

Something to consider while on that transatlantic flight, in first class, with tikka masala and a handy moviestar to comfort one through those turbulent bumps, is the sad fact that Jake Gyllenhaal is now, like me, slightly over 25 years old. The fact that actors such as Jake and Leo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire made such an impact on the big screen while so young (can one believe that Jake was younger than 25 when he played Jack Twist? Remarkable), begs the question of who are the youngsters making a similar mark. The NY Mag has been having a ponder. Many thanks to Mermon for such an interesting link.

Thanks to IHJ for the pics!

Jake Gyllenhaal supports the Oscar top ten, Natalie Portman reminisces, and Sir Ben Kingsley speaks PoP

The American Academy's decision to widen its best film category to include ten films has caused controversy. There are arguments for and against. Jake Gyllenhaal has expressed an opinion for: '"I believe in a year where you would have 'Up in the Air' and 'Precious' alongside 'Avatar' and 'Up,' I think all it does is bring more attention to the smaller films maybe people wouldn't see," said Jake Gyllenhaal, a 2005 Oscar nominee for "Brokeback Mountain."' I couldn't agree more. Anne Hathaway announces the nominations tomorrow.


A great interview with Natalie Portman in Playboy UK reveals a little more about the background to her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal and it's time for me to learn something new. Natalie was yet another of the people in Jake's life that he found through his brave decision to take to the London boards with This Is Our Youth. We know that Sam Mendes, Roland Emmerich and John Madden were all inspired to cast Jake in their films as a direct result of seeing him on stage. But from it, Jake also got a longlasting friendship with Natalie. Many thanks to Shoe89 for the headsup!


'And Jake I met, seeing his play in London, This Is Our Youth. Which he was phenomenal in. Playboy: Did you go back stage and say hi? Portman: Yeah. And then we became friends. And we've been really close ever since. So yeah, it was really a great opportunity.'

And Natalie, like some of us, maybe, thinks that more than a kiss may have been in order between her Grace and Jake's Tommy. 'Playboy: Did you feel like there should have been more sexuality going on between your character and Jake as your brother-in-law? It seemed a bit tame… Portman: Yeah, definitely. Just a kiss seems so... not a big deal these days! But yeah, of course in those circumstances, it was a huge deal. And if they had gone further you wonder, could they have ever recovered from that. And would you like forgive any of the characters. It's such a massive trespass.'

'Playboy: Finally, we must ask, Jake or Tobey? Portman: Um...All day long!' More here.


Ben Kinglsey - sorry, Sir Ben Kingsley - has been talking to IGN about his dastardly rrole in Prince of Persia: 'I really liked the character. Because of my years in Shakespeare, I really enjoy mining into the character, digging into the character to find out why he is what he is. Hoe he became. So in my portrayal of the uncle, Nizam, I was able -- very happily and enjoyably with Mike Newell -- to go into the script and speculate, "I see why he is this way. I see why his behavior is that way. I see how he's motivated and what drives him." So Mike Newell, being the lovely director he is, turned a plot-driven piece into a character-driven piece. It was very, very appealing to me and then it becomes, honestly, like any other film that one is enjoying making. You didn't feel the crushing weight of franchise, of Jerry Bruckheimer who really let us go, let us get on with it. We just got on with the job of telling a straight story with Mike Newell. It became a character-drive piece, which was tremendously enjoyable for me.'


'IGN: Did you get to do any action sequences? Kingsley: Oh, I do a lot of my own stunts. I do a lot of my own fights. I had a wonderful climbing sequence and I did a lot of that myself. Not too much of my horse-riding -- I'm nervous of horses -- but a lot of the other stuff I did, yeah. I had a great fight trainer. Great stunt guys to work with so that was very exciting.'


I do get the feeling that Prince of Persia was fun all round. And Dastan is hot. This evening, while walking home, something caught my eye as I strolled past a cinema - a big poster of Dastan, flourishing his blades and armour at me and insisting I see his movie - I will... I will...

Sunday's pictures of Jake going out for lunch with Maggie, Peter and Ramona are so wonderful - the perfect antidote to Mondays - but I thought here I'd zoom in on two things that caught my eye - bedhead hair and bedhair laces.




Inclides pictures from IHJ.

Jake on the boards - 'It's totally weird, like, taking all your clothes off and having sex with someone you barely know...'

Remember all those Farragut North readings and rumours from 2007/2008? Well, now the play is cast and ready to go - not with Jake Gyllenhaal as the lead, not even with Leo DiCaprio, but with James T Kirk Chris Pine at the helm. So while we muse on what might have been, time to think on what was.


Jake first took to the boards alongside Hayden Christensen and Anna Paquin: 'Obviously, I knew all their work and have been following them both since they were very little. I personally didn't actually know either of them, though I hung around outside their houses without either of them knowing, taking weird Polaroids of their naked body parts. Besides that, nothing really, like, weird. Nothing I haven't done before with other actors I've worked with. [All laugh]'


'I was born in 1980, so I do have clear memories of the later '80s. I knew the resonance of the Reagan era in America in my family and in the house. We weren't necessarily very happy about that time. But then again, I grew up in a relatively well-off family, so it didn't affect us as much as some other families in America. Which I think is a lot of what this play is about - rich kids who are safety-netted by all this money. And even when they're in contradiction to the politics of the time, they have no, you know, where is your political standing when you've had no real struggle? How do you develop anything when...'


'...These kids aren't impoverished financially, but they are emotionally. I think a lot of times financial poverty breeds emotional poverty, but there are plenty of times where the opposite happens. And I think the play is eventually pretty com- passionate because these kids are going through horrible, horrible things and dealing with it by creating their own reality through drugs, pop culture, a way of speaking.'


The script: 'My favourite line last week was that speech I have: 'It's totally weird, like, taking all your clothes off and having sex with someone you barely know, and then being like, "What's up now?" You know? Like it's such an intense experience, but then nobody knows what to fuckin' say, even though nothing bad actually happened'. Jake's second favourite line: 'You're a fucking loser'. More here.


This Is Our Youth Jake got back to the subject of sex when interviewed with the other two for London's Metro: ''We've a Republican president, we're on the edge of recession, the divide between rich and poor is still stratospheric,' says Gyllenhaal. 'We might not be those kids but we know people like them. We might not choose to express the depth of our insecurities with drug deals but everyone remembers what it feels like to have sex for the first time.'


I'll end with a review, this one is from the Telegraph: 'But I don't want to make the piece sound excessively solemn. It is full of delicious humour, with Lonergan nailing the excruciating rites of adolescent passage. Just the sight of Warren's awkward dancing and over-eager snogging reduced me to tears of laughter and poignant recognition of my own distant youth. Laurence Boswell directs this marvellous trio of actors with both confidence and an illuminating attention to detail. Gyllenhaal seizes all his chances as Warren, a beautiful and befuddled loser. But he also movingly suggests a lovable, vulnerable character just beginning to grow into maturity.' '


'As Dennis, Christensen edgily captures all the raging solipsism of youth, and that first appalled recognition that we may not be immortal, or indeed all that special, after all, while Paquin touchingly portrays all the locquaciously defensive insecurity of teenage romance.' Anyone who has ever smoked a joint or kissed anyone will love This Is Our Youth.'



Includes pictures from IHJ, here and Desiring Hayden.

Maggie in Spain and on Radio 1 - Jake entrances with the 'timeless art' of the theatre

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Christian Bale and the Batmobile have reached Spain - the premiere there was held last night at the Barcelona Coliseum Cinema and Maggie looked just sensational. Apparently, The Dark Knight has now taken more at the box office, in a little less than a week, than Batman Begins did during its entire run.





Before Maggie left the British Isles, she recorded an interview with Vernon Kay (British presenter and husband of Tess Daly) for Radio 1 of the BBC. You can listen to it here. If anyone has trouble listening to the interview - especially if you're overseas or if you're Twisted Logic - do email me. Interestingly, Vernon plays Mad World, the theme of Donnie Darko, and asks Maggie if she enjoyed making that film. She did - it was 'fun' and 'wild', mostly because it was made with her little brother. And thanks to Sheba for the link to a Sky video interview with Maggie on the London red carpet - I have still to find the one that I saw recorded but great to see this.


A timeless art

Inspired by a great conversation about the theatre in the comments to the last post, I wanted to do a link to these two articles from the Telegraph, which date from he days that Jake Gyllenhaal was striding the boards of the West End. Despite the critic's stated belief that Jake was in Jurassic III, which I believe he was not (I think we might have noticed), he declares that the influx of three hot American youths was just the thing to rejuvenate London theatre.


Jake played Warren: 'Just the sight of Warren's awkward dancing and over-eager snogging reduced me to tears of laughter and poignant recognition of my own distant youth. Laurence Boswell directs this marvellous trio of actors with both confidence and an illuminating attention to detail. Gyllenhaal seizes all his chances as Warren, a beautiful and befuddled loser. But he also movingly suggests a lovable, vulnerable character just beginning to grow into maturity.'


And here, you can read another reporter from the Telegraph write about the 'extraordinary thing' happening at the Garrick Theatre. She concludes: 'I discovered theatre in that way. I arrived in London on cheap day returns, bought student standbys and began to explore this strange world where you sit quietly in the dark and let someone take you by the hand and tell you a story. I was quickly hooked, but sometimes, even now, I am struck by the oddity of the habit. When a play is dull, or the production doesn't convince, and the queue for the loos stretches all the way to out to the street, I wonder why I am wasting my time. But then I see a play like This Is Our Youth, and I am entranced all over again. So, to all those first-timers, I say stick with it. You may suddenly find yourself in love with this timeless art in which people pretend to be someone else and touch a chord in your own heart.'


As someone who, as a student, did line up for returns at London's theatres every Saturday afternoon and saw duds as well as some amazing performances I'll never forget, I love to hear that Jake is seen by some to have played a part in the rejuvenation of a much loved art form and source of enormous pleasure and satisfaction, for both audiences and their actors.


Jake himself has said of the theatre: 'I just think I’m fed by it. I’m sucked dry by film and I think I’m fed by theatre. There’s a start and stop to film where you give and you give and you give, and you don’t have that give and take like you do in the theatre, and I think it’s just necessary. I get rid of bad habits, but it just fills me.'


Includes pictures from Popsugar and IHJ.

Baddie Ben - and living up to Jake

It was bound to be the role for him, but now Variety has confirmed that Ben Kingsley is to play the part of the evil Vizier 'Nizam, who plots to kill his brother King Shahrman and blame it on Prince Dastan so he can take the throne.' One trusts that Nizam's dastardly plot comes to a sticky end, but not until Prince Dastan has proven his credentials as a scimitar-wielding, princess-wooing, minaret-leaping hero with sky-blue eyes and an unwaxed chest.


Meanwhile, it looks like Nailed is ploughing on. According to posters on IMDb, today there is filming going on at the State House in Columbia, while yesterday there was film action at the 'corner of Ott and Duncan.'


Jake was better

We've been talking about the progression of Jake Gyllenhaal's career until now, when he is in a position where younger actors are beginning to view him as a role model. Jake is (has been and will be), of course, major competition for actors of his age, such as Kieran Culkin, who was another of the actors with promise who took to the London stage with This Is Our Youth. His experience was not the same as Jake's.


'Culkin, for his part, wanted to be told where he was going wrong. He was desperate to be directed, corrected and affirmed. When he came to London as part of the third imported cast in Kenneth Lonergan's hit play, This Is Our Youth, he was completely thrown when the director went back to New York when it opened and left them alone.'


'Lonergan was going to come, but couldn't. There was nobody to talk him through it. He was convinced they were no good until the last couple of weeks, and absolutely sure he was never as good as Jake Gyllenhaal, who played the same part in the first cast, because he would ask people who had seen both versions and they'd say it straight out: yep, Jake was better. "They didn't feel they needed to lie," he says. "But I would ask, so I had it coming."'


'He also found the process of performance so exhausting that by the time they were a few weeks into the run, he would get out of bed when he needed to go to the theatre and go home to bed as soon as he was finished. He was sleeping incredible hours. "And when I got home, he says, "I slept for, like, a week."'


'Perhaps because of This Is Our Youth, he and Jake Gyllenhaal are often lumped together in magazine articles that dub them the new Holden Caulfields, the current incarnations of that hardy perennial, the disaffected boy at large in a skewed world. Steers has acknowledged Salinger's anti-hero as an inspiration for Igby, so this is probably inevitable. It also seemed pretty cool at first, Culkin says. But now that he's read the same argument about 20 times, it really doesn't seem cool at all. "The whole Holden Caulfield thing is totally overdone," he says wearily.'


Includes pictures from IHJ and Jakegyllenhaal.org.