Jake Gyllenhaal is too serious, Oscar-y to talk about his physical transformation
Some people have strong feelings about Jake Gyllenhaal. I’m not one of them. I used to like him, genuinely, but over the years I’ve just stopped caring for the most part. Some people felt that Jake was totally robbed of an Oscar nomination for Nightcrawler, so maybe his new Oscar-bait film Southpaw will get him one. I’ve seen the trailer and it looks like it’s not going to be my jam. I’m not into boxing movies in general, but I’m just not buying Jake specifically in this role. What bugs me a little bit is that Jake is trying to remake himself into a super-serious, humorless, super-Oscary dude. And I think people would be more likely to root for him if he didn’t come across like a guy who takes himself too seriously, you know? This Details interview actually opens with Jake asking “Do you actually want to know how many sit-ups I did? Are you easing me into the question?” Like the bulk of this interview and a million other interviews he will do won’t be exactly about his physical transformation.
His physical transformation is part of his internal transformation into a character: “I believe that. I really do. But I think we all see what we want to see. If you want to see a guy who has gotten into shape, then that’s what you see. But if you want to see what I feel, I think you have to look a little deeper…People have a lot of other sh-t they have to do that’s more interesting and more important, so I don’t blame them for being like, ‘Oh, wait, how many sit-ups did you have to do?’ Or, ‘Oh, wow, what did you eat to lose that much weight?’ But you’re missing the point. Nightcrawler was ironically about the trouble with that question. It was about why people only look at how much weight you lost, as opposed to what’s at the heart of what you’re doing.”
Doing darker films: “People say, ‘You made all these changes in your life, and all your movies seem so different now. I really like the movies you’re making now.’ Which implies that they didn’t . . .”
His 20s: “I was trying to figure out a lot of stuff… We’re all told we’re going to get to a place where those things will come together, where we’ll somehow be whole or happy or whatever it is. So I went searching….There’s a period of time in your life, in your twenties, when you’re listening to a lot of other people’s opinions. You’re not sure about what you believe in, and you’re moving in a direction that you feel like looks right to other people. And then you think, Wait, what do I feel? What do I want? What moves me? It’s not always so pure and clear. It’s not like I have my agent on one shoulder and my pure artist on the other.”
Taking real hits on Southpaw: “I got hit pretty hard in the face. All the producers ran [over]. I don’t think out of real worry for me, but just the fact that we were only two weeks into shooting. There is something jarring about being hit in the face. I don’t know how to explain it. It wakes me up. Your initial instinct is to lean out. It’s the instinct to lean in that took me five months. Hitting someone—I don’t have as much of a problem with that. But I don’t like to get hit.”
His journey: “What else is there but the journey of trying to be a good person, or a good man? In this incarnation, that seems to be my goal. It’s a complicated thing, because I think the idea of good doesn’t subtract complexities, doesn’t subtract darkness.”
So Oscar. Much serious. I understand what he’s saying in almost every quote and I even agree with him, but the way he speaks about his transformations and his journeys and all of that… he just seems like such a morose dude who takes himself way too seriously. Like, he’s still trying to prove that he’s this intense and amazing dramatic actor, to the point where he’s just boring people to death. I don’t know – maybe a Jake-loonie will feel differently about this interview.
Photos courtesy of Details, WENN.
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