15 / 64
CINEMA
interview
15
"I
“It's not about a genre, or a specific
character; I never go for that. For me,
I want an honesty and a beating heart
that exists underneath the material. I want to
feel the emotion of the story. And I seek out
friendship and honesty and truth.”
Like the characters he is known for playing
of late, Jake Gyllenhaal is a serious man.
Given the level of success he's achieved you
would think he’d give himself a break, but this
isn’t the case. "I get down on myself,"
he explains, head cast downward. "I never
feel like I truly get a part. Like, I really
nail it. You constantly hear you should
have no regrets but I do, I always do."
When you consider the dedication
some of his recent films have
required, you can’t blame him for
being intense – in fact, some of
the preparation has bordered on
madness. For 2014’s
Nightcrawler
,
in which he plays a sinister voyeur
reporting on car crashes, murders
and mysterious crimes in LA's
dead of night, Gyllenhaal lost a
substantial 30 pounds, sustaining
himself on kale salad and a little
meat. But that's nothing when
compared to his training for
Southpaw
,
where he reached a level of fitness a
professional boxer might aspire to.
“It was mostly about skill. Learning
the skills, the knowledge. The ability," he
explains. "I trained for five months, went to
a training camp, immersed myself in that
skill. Not just for the body but also for the
mind. I was trying to hone the unconscious,
have it become part of my routine, two
times a day. And with that stuff, it just
happens to your body,”
Everest
I'm no longer the person
I was in movies I made
ten years ago. I'm a
different incarnation
of that person.
Southpaw
packs an emotional punch as
well as in the boxing ring. Following the
murder of his wife (Rachel McAdams),
Billy ‘The Great’ Hope (Gyllenhaal) is a
broken man. It's less a story of redemption
and more about Billy trying to salvage
some part of himself, never truly
recovering from the tragedy.
“It's a very human story,” he says,
“about fragility and loss and life. It's about
the people that support you, who give you
heart to get through that pain. That makes you
into a champion, and ultimately a real man.”
In September, Gyllenhaal will star alongside
SamWorthington and Keira Knightley in epic
disaster film
Everest
, based on the 1996
tragedy where horrific snowstorms led to
the death of several climbers and their
guides. Gyllenhaal describes it as a “tragic,
huge movie”.
When asked what brought about the desire
to tackle these meatier roles, he says it is
simply the passage of time. “That's all down
to growth and maturity. I'm no longer the
person that I was in movies I made ten
years ago. I'm a different incarnation of
that person. And one of the aspects
that changes your career is that, in the
initial stages, at the beginning, people
are telling you what you fit into.
That's part of it and you listen.”
But from the man whose
breakthrough was playing the
oddball lead in indie gem
Donnie
Darko
, did we really expect
anything less?
Everest
is in cinemas on Sept 17
Donnie Darko
Nightcrawler
Southpaw