Jake Gyllenhaal Shares Amazing Acting Advice: Take Acting “Extraordinarily Seriously”
Jake Gyllenhaal is currently doing press interviews for the upcoming feature film, ‘Southpaw’. While, you would hope for Gyllenhaal to share some inspiring or amazing acting advice or how his character was influenced by the real-life struggles of Marshall “Eminem” Mathers during an interview with British Esquire, Gyellenhaal decided to discuss the moon and how being actor is more scientific than talent.
There are several amazing quotes to note from the Esquire interview, in part because it’s written in that familiar style that shows that Jake Gyllenhaal is now a serious actor. Gyllenhaal told writer Sanjiv Bhattacharya that the change for him occurred in 2010, after the release of ‘Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time’:
Then something tectonic took place. His priorities shifted and his perspective changed. “I woke up one day and I wasn’t in the right room,” he says. “It was like a David Byrne song: ‘That’s not my beautiful house. That’s not my beautiful wife.’”
On the filming of his sports drama ‘Southpaw’, director Antoine Fuqua told Battacharya about Gyllenhaal, “He even broke up with his girlfriend because he was at the ring every day!”
Prior to his boxing movie, Gyllenhaal played a cop in ‘End of Watch’ another dramatic role.
“There were times, when I was taking cover, wearing a Kevlar vest and thinking, ‘Come on, we’re making a movie!’ You know?” he says. But at the same time, he loved it so much, it changed his life. “I have never felt so good about being in Los Angeles as when I was in East LA working with police officers. Just being in that culture, especially the Hispanic culture. It was amazing.”
But, Jake Gyllenhaal’s amazing belief system is probably the best part of the Esquire interview:
This is why he prepares so intensely, because for Gyllenhaal, empathy has a molecular, even mystical quality. “I believe deeply in the unconscious,” he says. “That you literally accumulate the molecules of the space that you’re in. We’re like 90 per cent water, so naturally we are going to be affected by the moon when it’s full: if the sea is, why wouldn’t we be? That seems scientific to me. So, if you spend enough time in whatever environment your character would exist in – the way I spent six months with police officers – then the molecules of that environment must transfer somehow. And then you put it on screen, and people go, ‘I feel something that I don’t normally feel.’”
At least Jake Gyllenhaal is very humble. The actor shares some acting advice that shows how modest he truly his.
“There’s a hierarchy of importance, and actors are way down. I get that my job is absurd. I’m hyper-aware of how ridiculous it is. But at the same time, I take it extraordinarily seriously! Because as absurd as it is, it can also breed empathy.”
Moon + Water + Boxing + Humility = Box office success! I think Jake Gyllenhaal has this Hollywood thing down to a science.
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