Jake Gyllenhaal Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters

I love the movies that I've been a part of.

Someone asked me the other day if I have any regrets

of the choices that I've made and I'm like, regrets?

In being able to make movies?

[laughs]

I'm like, the hell kind of question is that?

[upbeat music]

October Sky.

It's sort of a crazy thing to be that age, to be

16 years old and be starring in a movie.

I auditioned for it and I worked so hard to get the role,

so it meant so much to me, you know.

I mean, I remember having to through, like,

auditions and auditions and auditions and auditions

and improving myself and meetings and all this stuff

and it was like it meant a lot to me.

And so that was very similar to me in the same way

that the love that Homer, that character, has for,

you know, rockets and trying to get out

and that kind of drive and love and ambition

and trying to prove oneself, you know,

to make something bigger than where you've come from.

All of those themes are very similar to me

in my life at the time.

And the real Homer was just such a lovely guy.

The book he wrote is beautiful

and he really took me under his wing

and was just so kind and engaged with me.

And I remember I worked very hard, I remember that.

But I loved it so much and it's such a beautiful story.

I think it holds up to this day, you know.

And then you're working with Laura Dern

and you work with Chris Cooper.

And I've always loved watching other actors work.

I'm mesmerized on the opposite side watching them.

Sometimes I can't always even engage

'cause I just love watching them.

And to be that age and to see great acting,

that's how you begin to learn.

A specific scene where we're in a fight scene

with Chris Cooper was me and he obviously plays my dad.

And I remember being very excited for the fight scene

'cause as an actor, you know, particularly a young actor,

you know, I get to yell and scream and blah, blah.

I remember him coming up to me after about the second take

and him saying to me, you're not listening to me.

Listen to what I'm saying to you.

And I remember it went from me just sort of

raising my voice and yelling

and it not coming from a real place

to having his words that he was saying to me hit me.

Like, hit me in the heart.

Watch yourself, Homer.

If I went to Indianapolis, maybe I can go to college.

Maybe even get a job Cape Canaveral.

There's nothing here for me!

The town is dying, the mine is dying.

Everybody knows it here but you.

You wanna get out of here so bad, then go.

Go! Yeah, I'll go!

Yeah, I'll go! Go, go!

And I'll be gone forever!

I won't even look back!

To actually listen as an actor, as a person,

everything becomes different.

Everything becomes much more significant.

And I just remember that,

him stopping and just saying, listen to me,

and the entire scene changed.

And a lot of the next couple of takes we used

were right after he told me that.

Joe Johnston who directed October Sky

directed the first Captain America.

He really gave me my first shot and I owe him a lot,

that he believed in me.

I wouldn't be here talking to you.

I wouldn't be able to make all the movies I've made

or even make this Spider-Man movie

without Joe believing in me.

I mean, I like to think someone else may have,

but most likely not.

[laughs]

Spider-Man: Far From Home.

I mean, walking into MCU and Marvel Universe, it's huge.

There's sort of a lot that's expected of you

in the process of making the movies

and also, as the character.

And it's the same kind of feeling

of someone giving you that suit and putting it on you

and being like, uh, is it right for me?

I mean, it's fun.

I mean, it's fun knowing everything that happens.

I mean, I knew the events of Endgame, you know,

before Endgame came out.

I love the speculation

because a lot of times, you'll read something

or someone will say something to you and you'll realize,

oh, oh yeah, that might be true.

You know, and it was someone's sort of random idea.

I also think a lot of them are wrong

and that's fun also.

[laughs]

And it feels like a pressure.

It feels like a pressure even when you're making it.

You know, I think people love that character

and it's so different from the character in the comics.

And you know, when you're doing something as different

from the comics as we did in this,

I think you kinda go, like...

Disastrous

at times.

He's got a bland personality.

He's basically just very boring.

No, it was, like, genuinely lovely.

He puts everything

into making Spider-Man great.

He knows how much pressure there is on him

and he knows how much people care about that character

and he puts everything physically, emotionally,

mentally into it.

I think it wasn't until literally a day ago

when he saw the movie finally that he said he could relax.

He offered me a lot of advice that I needed

and he just constantly was like, yes,

this is exactly how everyone feels

when they first start off in this space.

And we just became friends that way.

You know, I think he admires me, I admire him

and both for very different reasons.

And as much as actors in press junkets

after the fact, like to talk about how wonderful

the other one was to work with

and who knows if it's true or not half the time,

I really like him a lot as a human being

and I enjoy being with him outside of all this stuff.

So that all went into the movie as well.

Donnie Darko.

I found Donnie Darko and the character of Donnie Darko

very comforting at a time in my life where I was really lost

and trying to figure out a lot of things for myself,

about myself, my place in the world,

which is what he was going through.

My dad says this thing where he's like,

the job of art is to disturb the comfortable

and to comfort the disturbed.

And like, I think that that's very true in a lot of ways.

And at the time, I think I was, like,

the world was just crazy, you know.

You get thrust out into it and you're, like,

whoa, it's trippy, you know.

And to know that there was a character

that was, like, feeling those same feelings,

gave me a real outlet and made me not go mad myself.

[laughs]

Donnie, you're such a dick.

You know, I've always looked up to my sister.

In a lot of ways, I probably credit her

with the reason why I wanted to act,

why I started to act, why I got into it.

We were both starting out, both very, you know,

obviously very ambitious people.

Like, there's a lot in the similarities

between the two of them fighting at the dinner table.

Maybe you should be the one in therapy

then mom and dad can pay someone $200 an hour

to listen to all your thoughts, so we don't have to.

Okay, you want to tell mom and dad

why you stopped taking your medication?

[Elizabeth] You're such a fuck-ass. What?

Please.

Did you just call me a fuck-ass?

[Mom] Elizabeth, that's enough.

I have admired her since I was born

as we do our older siblings.

Even when we despise them, we love them deeply.

You know, that's the sibling relationship

for anyone who has one.

Working with her was complicated for both of us.

It's weird to put a real relationship

in a fictional space.

But I think as actors, as Ang Lee said once,

I heard him say, we pretend to get closer to the truth.

And both of us are real truth-seekers in scenes.

You know, that's what we love to do.

And so to be working with someone who, like,

calls you out, you know.

What was that? Why'd you do that?

That's weird, weird choice.

Oh, that feels true, that's honest.

You know, that it's so present, was amazing

when I look back on it now.

And that's what I desire.

I mean, that's what I think a scene really only is

fulfilling when you're learning something

about yourself in it.

You put on a lot of

guises and disguises,

but truthfully, where I wanna go

is places where I don't have that.

But I try all these tricks before something real happens.

You know, and that is what I love about it.

It's like, what about this? No.

What about that? No.

What about that? No.

What about that? Hm.

What about that? Just, you know, calm down and listen.

Like, back to Chris Cooper every time.

And my sister's one of those actors too.

I mean, it's why she's extraordinary

'cause she's similar to Chris

and all the great actors that I've had

the opportunity to work with.

They're constantly, like, just be still, listen, be honest

as best as you can if you're an actor.

It was a long journey

and continues to be a very long journey for that movie.

I do know that Passion of the Christ

was released by the same company

and they had just made an extraordinary amount of money

from that movie.

And from the funds of that movie,

they were able to take a risk and say,

okay, we'll do a theatrical release because you know,

we have some to spare.

And thank god they did.

I mean, it just goes to show those things you think

are sort of gonna fail or people are telling you they are,

you know, the life of something can be so many.

There can be so many different lives.

It's not like the one big opening weekend

'cause, like, they opened and no one really saw it.

And actually, it got found again in London.

I remember I was doing a play on the West End

and people started to just generate this energy.

I was like, whoa, what's happening?

And then it just came back alive again

and has continued to be alive for a decade now.

Stronger.

I just loved the story, I loved the script,

and I loved the story

and I loved the character of Jeff Beauman.

I think I said often about him that

he is really a superhero.

You know, the things that he went through

to get to where he is, to survive and to live today,

are, like, of Endgame proportions internally.

His story taught me more about my career and about life

than anything I've ever done.

And when I read that,

I just really wanted to be part of it, you know.

There was a scene where I'm, like,

I drag myself across a parking lot and get to a window

and I'm banging on the window

and Dave Gordon Green let the camera roll for, you know,

roll out, really.

And in digital world, you can roll for a very long time.

And I was there for about, like, 30 minutes at this window

and pushed beyond, I think, you know,

my idea of the fictional part of the character, you know,

into another space.

And it was a beautiful thing to discover

and the pain of that moment

and to feel a lot Bostonians who were our crew,

who were so deeply affected as the world was

by the event of the marathon bombings,

feel that energy and have us all feel it together.

And

I learned two things.

I learned that, you know, a crew,

like, everybody working is not only an audience,

but we are all in it together

even if someone is behind here.

You guys can't see them, but we're all here together.

And that's very powerful.

And we're all kind of in it together.

And then I also learned

that you can't lose your imagination,

that acting is, like, all about imagination.

And there's a lot of talk about, like, oh, commitment and

you know, method acting and you know,

how far do you go and blah, blah, blah.

It's everybody's favorite conversation

when you're talking to an actor

or not favorite conversation.

But it is a conversation that's had a lot.

And I just believe so deeply in your imagination.

That's the fun.

It's like the play, it's what you need.

And I had lost it in that moment

and it threw me for a number of days 'cause I went so far.

And I just realize that's not acting to me anymore.

Every movie you do, you learn about the process

of what you do, you know, how far you can push it,

what techniques you wanna use.

And I've used my career because I've been lucky enough

to work on a number of films.

I was just forming my production company at the time

and we produced that movie

alongside Mandeville who produced it as well.

My company has become more about

helping other people tell their stories.

I'm not in a lot of the movies that we produce,

but I am occasionally.

And yes, you know, I was brought up with storytellers,

you know, and that is my real love.

You know, watching stories get made is really exciting.

Like I said before, it's like watching an actor work

is more exciting than doing the acting myself sometimes.

You know, and I love performing.

But it's just the magic of stories

that I wanna keep trying to help.

If I have the opportunity, people know who I am,

and they know my name, then I can lend it

to something to help it get made.

End of Watch.

What it did to my life in the five months

I did in preparation with police officers

around Los Angeles County and East L.A.

and what I saw just changed me forever.

To see the work that they do,

to be with them watching them do their work,

to be in sometimes very dangerous situations,

and also beautiful situations,

to see human behavior at its most trying sometimes

changed everything and the way I see the world.

So I look at that as a very, very particular moment

in my life, in my career,

something I needed, you know.

All right, this is my day job.

Some of you--

Sorry, bro, I'm recording.

This is my day job.

Some of you might know me as Brian.

The process of filming it was cool.

You know, I fancy myself a bit of a filmmaker

and so we were very much a part of the process

of shooting that movie.

We shot on camera and my character has a camera

that he's shooting with.

We didn't want it to be cute, you know.

And I actually look at that as an extension, you know.

End of Watch into the movie Nightcrawler, you know.

To me, the movie of Nightcrawler

is the evolution of the cameraman.

Like, that was my philosophy the entire time.

The evolution of an artist.

Nightcrawler.

It's just fantastic writing.

It is tried and true.

The blueprint of anything that is great in storytelling

comes from the beginning, from great writing.

And that's not always true.

It doesn't always work to that equation.

But in the case of Nightcrawler,

it was hands-down, with the exception of a few,

one of the greatest screenplays that I'd read.

A character that already had been developed profoundly

by Dan Gilroy, before it even got to me.

And so I had to do the finishing touches.

And that's the way it should be

and very rarely the way it is.

When I read it, I just went, like, oh my god,

he's given me thousands of avenues, so many choices.

But I had this vision of this guy

and he talked a lot in the script.

And the way he talked was odd

and I was always trying to wrap my head around it.

I just had this vision of myself.

I just thought there could be nothing physically imposing

about this guy.

He was all mind.

And from anything I know about people who are, like,

really like blood up here

more than anywhere else in their body

is that oftentimes they're not thinking about, like,

what they're gonna eat next or if they can eat

or what they're gonna do next.

They have one goal and one goal only

and that's where they're headed.

And I just thought I gotta make myself into that idea.

We spent, you know, 20 nights shooting the movie.

20 to shoot that movie.

It was like nothing in movie time, you know.

And I just knew we'd have to go.

And there were, like, three to four-page monologues,

you know, that this guy had to say.

So that was part of the reason why the speed

at which he speaks comes from that,

comes from just going, how do I as an actor

make sure this incredible writing

and performance I'm gonna give stays in the movie.

Gonna have to say it fast.

I also wanna go to the next rung and meet your team

and the station manager and the director and the anchors

and start developing my own personal relationships.

I'd like to start meeting them this morning.

You'll take me around, you'll introduce me

as the owner and president of Video Production News

and remind them of some of my many other stories.

People talk about him as like a creepy sociopath

and there's truth to that.

And yeah, I think he is a prophetic.

He was a prophetic sort of symbol

of capitalism and leadership that we have now come to

become accustomed to.

But I always looked at it, like, as this beautiful artist

learning how to use a camera.

And what he was shooting was obviously sort of perverse

and sick, but at the same time,

he really looked at himself as an artist.

And you can watch him and for me, that was the big thing.

It's what I was most proud of in that movie.

You can watch him, the style of how he shoots things change.

When he's moving bodies, you know,

which is totally illegal and disgusting, in the movie,

you know, I don't know how much different that is

from a Damien Hirst painting or a Damien Hirst piece.

You know, like, that's what he looked at it as.

It was my perspective of it

while I was playing that character,

which was fascinating and disturbing.

Brokeback Mountain.

I think we had been cast for our essences

without really understanding what our essences were.

And that's outside of sexuality.

I mean, we're, like, two straight guys

cast in these roles.

But who we are, who we were,

Ang could see and I don't know if I could.

So when the movie had the response that it had,

I think all of us who had been cast,

that includes every actor,

but the main actors of Heath and me and Anne Hathaway

and Michelle Williams, like, I think,

I don't think we recognized what Ang had seen in us.

So we're sort of wandering around blind

at the profundity and the echo that the movie made.

We understood the power of the story,

but I think playing a character in it, we didn't fully.

And I don't think we ever had any idea

it would have the impact that it had.

You're gonna do this again next summer?

Well, maybe not.

Like I said, me and Alma's getting married in November.

So...

I'm trying to get something on a ranch, I guess.

And you?

Might go up to my daddy's place and

give him a hand through the winter.

I might be back

if the army don't get me.

Ang does this incredible thing where he's very close to you

in the pre-production process before you start filming

and then in the filming,

you become this sort of painting he's watching

and he doesn't want to touch any of it to disturb it.

And it becomes a bit cold actually.

I think he has to focus his heart on the objective

while you, you know, do what you do in front of him.

I enjoy rehearsals and I believe that writing

should hold up to the rehearsal process

and I think you learn a lot in the rehearsal process too.

You also just mostly break through all of...

I mean, there's some moments where it's nice to just

meet somebody and go.

But I find if you're gonna get to a place

where you really wanna land with someone

and you wanna be present with them,

it's very good, particularly in emotional things

and stuff like that, you need to

at least spend enough time with them that all that,

forgive me, but all the bullshit of, like,

small talk goes away and then you can get to it.

When I say, all we have is Brokeback Mountain,

I can't quit you, you know, those lines...

Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together.

Fuckin' real good life.

Had us a place of our own.

But you didn't want it, Ennis.

So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain!

Everything's built on that, that's all we got, boy.

Fuckin' all.

So I hope you know that if you don't ever know the rest.

You count the damn few times that we have been together

in nearly 20 years and you measure the short fucking leash

you keep me on and then you ask me about Mexico

and you tell me you kill me for needing something

that I don't hardly never get.

You have no idea how bad it gets.

And I'm not you, I can't

make it on a couple of high-altitude fucks

once or twice a year.

You are too much for me, Ennis.

You son of a whoreson bitch.

I wish I knew how to quit you.

We had rehearsed it.

We had gone earlier, months earlier

when it was still snowing there and I remember it was about

covered in two or three feet of snow.

We didn't even see what the ground looked like.

And at the time, I had my dog, who's now passed away,

jumping through the snow, I remember.

And then the spring came and everything melted

and we shot the scene.

And there was, like, a palpable feeling

of that scene when we were doing it.

To make a movie that even just works is a miracle.

[laughs]

And when it resonates even beyond that,

it's impossible and it has nothing to do with you

in the end.

Just speaking of Brokeback Mountain,

that's the feeling I have.

I feel deeply about it.

It had nothing to do with me.

It came to me, I was honored to be a part of it,

and it is now everyone else's

in a way that I can't even fathom.

And that's why I empathize with, like, any artist

or any director, anybody doing this 'cause it's like

what an audience experiences and what you experience

are two totally different things.

And oftentimes, reconciling those things

is the weirdest part about it.

And you never know what people are gonna respond to.

You try your best at every turn.

You put all your time and your heart

and your belief in the thing that you're doing.

And I think that goes for everybody in everything they do

when you care.

And then you're just constantly surprised

by what people love and what they don't.

[laughs]