Gyllenhaal Jake Quotes & Sayings

I loved working on 'Donnie Darko.' I learned a lot from the cast, Jake Gyllenhaal and the producers. I love doing what I do because I get to meet so many great people. — Daveigh Chase

There are a lot of different things that are spinning and connecting when your family sees what you do. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I want, overall, to trust what I know is right. There have been many times when I haven't. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I think you hear a lot of people say 'I support the troops' and all of that, but I really feel deeply that I do. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I would really love to direct one day. I think there are certain actors who love the character and the performance and that's all they want to be a part of. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I grew up on movie sets, so it was something I just found familiar. When I was growing up also, in high school, I would audition for things and my parents let me audition for things - with the thought that I wouldn't get them. And then I would get them ... sometimes, and it would surprise them. — Jake Gyllenhaal

When I look at that now, all I think about is what a master [David Fincher] I was working with, and all of the things I could have watched and learned - and I didn't. And how, now, in my career, how I would love to have a ton of takes. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I think my strength is to do a take all the way through. I am definitely not someone who can do a sprint. Maybe I am not that smart, but it takes me a while to find the moment, and I like to be pushed toward it. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Romance is important, but to have a friend you can use as a mirror, who can give you an objective response, that's what's really important. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I've decided as an actor the only, the power I have really is in the performance. It's the only real place I get to sort of communicate. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I was brought up, and my sister too, with two people who were always saying, "What you do is really nowhere near as important as the things that are going on in the world, and if your work needs to reflect that, or you want it to, then you need to strive for a certain type of excellence." — Jake Gyllenhaal

As a producer, you have an opportunity to see the whole and bring people together. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to — Jake Gyllenhaal

It bothers me when people say, 'Oh, you're so down to earth - for an actor.' Even when they don't say 'for an actor,' I feel like that's the implication. Why are the standards so low for performers? — Jake Gyllenhaal

I also think within the scene, a specific scene - if I were to play a part that I played 10 years ago now, my interpretation of that scene would be totally different. I would be making different choices. Because I can't somehow subtract all of the experiences that I've had in my life. And it's fascinating to see, because somewhere I'm very reflective in that. You know, I've been playing basically actually close to 40 years old, so I'm somewhere lost in age in this movie. But it's been fascinating to see that I can't subtract that time. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Some movies you fall a step behind, and some you stay in the same place, make the same choices. And then sometimes there are people who know more than you but show you, and that's the maximum you can hope for - doing that with someone who says, 'I like you for what you are, and I want you to be in my picture.' — Jake Gyllenhaal

I remember Chris Cooper saying to me - I was doing October Sky with him - and he said, "You know, you're just yelling at me." He's like, "You're just yelling. You need to listen." We were in a fight, and you know, oh you'd get so excited as an actor, you're like, "We have a fight, oh, I get to get mad." And he just said, "You need to listen." And I started listening - and then all of a sudden where I was listening was where, I don't know, anger became something else. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I remember watching Meryl Streep in, The River Wild. There's this scene where she's has a gun pointed at her, it's absurd in a lot of ways. Someone pulls a gun on her I think, I'm not really fully aware of the scene and she just, she starts, you see her terrified. And then all of a sudden she starts to burst out laughing. She starts laughing. Like she can't stop laughing. Because she's terrified and she's emotional and there are no rules to what you're supposed to feel. That to me is like A number one, that's the thing I have to remind myself all the time. — Jake Gyllenhaal

My mum and dad are pretty amazing chefs and they spent most of my childhood cooking really extravagant things for my sister and me. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I walk around thinking job to job, trying to not have regrets. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I don't always think it's necessary for somebody to be nice all the time. — Jake Gyllenhaal

It's one of the most beautiful scripts [Brokeback Mountain] I've ever read, and it was Ang Lee, and at the time Heath [Ledger] was a friend of mine - before we even shot the movie - and always sort of alluring to me. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I'm going to continue doing what I want to do. And if it means I want to go and make a big movie, if it has something to say, I will want to make it. I don't want to spend my life wasting my time. If it's a big movie, I want to do it. If it's a small movie, I want to do it. — Jake Gyllenhaal

We are all from different cultures. Heath's [Ledger] Australian, really. I'm from here. Ang's [Lee] from China. But I think Ang gets very close in preproduction and rehearsals. And then he allows his actors - I don't think scared of actors, but I think he's scared of getting in on the scenes he's watching. The space he's watching. So he just totally disconnects from you while you're shooting. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I love artists. I love watching other people work. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I like that when you create you really do create with a very small group of people, and in that space, before it goes out to all these people, that's what I love. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I always find you go back to an animal; it will always show you the sort of primal aspects of behavior. You always know how to respond if you choose that. — Jake Gyllenhaal

As an actor, no matter what, you're at the whim of so many other people all the time. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I'm a very political person, and I make political choices in my movies. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I love storytelling, you know, beyond anything. I love a great story beyond a great performance. Storytelling is about what we all do together and how we collaborate together. A performance can be a collaboration in ways, but oftentimes it's one individual thing. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Often times it's really hard for me to articulate why I connect to something. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I have a profound respect for cinematographers. That is my secret sauce. Like they are everything to me. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I hope I'm a spiritual person. I'm trying to be a spiritual person. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Really, contrary to popular belief, I like to have a good time and not take myself too seriously. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I think no matter who you are, no matter what you do in your life, no matter where you come from, you have to fight; we all fight in different ways. And its a metaphor, sometimes its literal, and I really believe that freedom is on the other side of discipline. Your mind can only match where your body is. And so its...you're never mastering it, there's always a lesson--things catch you in unexpected ways. And I think that's a beautiful metaphor for life. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I can't make a movie unless I believe in the themes behind it. I mean, that's the first question I ask myself, always, is, 'What is this movie about?' — Jake Gyllenhaal

I'm always nervous about it. You know, somehow, without even knowing it, I try and recreate the idea of what it feels like to go in front of an audience every night when I'm making a film. And that similar type of pressure and excitement before a scene, or preparing for a movie, so ... — Jake Gyllenhaal

Heath [Ledger] was always somebody who I admired.He was way beyond his years as a human, in a way. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I don't think I had any idea at the time how to work with someone as masterful as he is. And I don't think at the time I really understood what was happening. I think I was in a space where I was like: there are all these things. I was shooting all these takes with David [Fincher], and I was just confused, as a person, and as an actor feeling a little too big for my britches and that this thing was happening and then also not having enough skill yet, and technique to know exactly where I was, and know about the character. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Sometimes you need an anchor, whatever it might be. You need a space to connect. So often you get into a way of doing things. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I understand the opposite side of the camera. I have a profound respect for that. I have worked with people who, when you hit that mark, are doing 50 percent of your work for you. So, you know, it's a balance. When you walk into a mark and you're lit a certain way or something's happening so often you don't know what's behind you ... And that's what's so strange about being a movie actor. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I don't have a "I want to play this or that," I just don't have that. I've never been like that. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I'm superstitious a little bit. — Jake Gyllenhaal

As a producer, it starts when I talk about privacy and silence. It starts before anybody believes in it. And I think that's, you have to have a real sense of self, and in order to push things through. And so often, what's interesting, is how many people dismiss an idea that eventually everybody [gloms] onto. So to me it's, that's what I mean by hard. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Even as an actor, I think like a storyteller. My parents raised us to look at the script. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I don't want to be lofty when I say this, but I don't know what a success is any more. I know how we define it, but that was a moment where I went, "Wait, who am I?" You could feel the business, in particular, kind of go "He's all right, let's go over here." I started to go, "Wait, I know why I love to do this." I think I got off track in why I love to do it. — Jake Gyllenhaal

It'd be really nice to wake up looking like, I don't know, Jake Gyllenhaal and think, 'Let's try this on for a day and see how it feels.' — Benedict Cumberbatch

I did a lot of background and research on 'End Of Watch,' and I definitely used certain skills that I learned. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I was listening to this Adele song, where she's like, "When we were young ... " I was like, "You're 27. Are you kidding me? — Jake Gyllenhaal

My mum raised us on classic movies and a lot of musical theatre. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Peter Sarsgaard, he's an extraordinary actor, and I would say that Peter has really brought into my life and my sister's life a sense of presence as an actor that I never really understood or knew about until I met him. They've been together for a very long time, and he introduced me to the idea of the presentation. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I'm open to whatever people want to call me. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I liken movies to playing a piano: Sometimes you're playing the chords and different notes with unresolved cadences and playing all major chords that are all over the place, and you're enjoying yourself with a great, simple melody. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I've never had sex with boxers on and it's an odd thing to watch actors do. That's not saying I haven't tried ... I just don't recommend it! — Jake Gyllenhaal

I think it's more, at least at the time, a sense of abstraction. My mind doesn't really work in a way where there's a definitive sense of something. I go one way and then it opens up into a million different ideas, and somehow, when you look at the art, Buddhist art, or particularly Tibetan art, you know, it's a similar thing. All of a sudden there are a million lotus leaves and you're following one to the next and to another, and I related to that, and it felt simple and easy to me. And it made me feel smart. — Jake Gyllenhaal

The best thing that I got was rehearsing with my father. It was always about the process of figuring things out, and trying something new, and having another take on something and keeping it alive. — Jake Gyllenhaal

When I was 19, I thought [Brokeback Mountain] was going to be the best movie ever made. And everyone was going to see it and it was just going to be incredible. And then nobody saw it and it didn't get bought at Sundance. And it was a really great experience. Humbling. And then it's since found its way. — Jake Gyllenhaal

When I was young, before school, my father would wake me up and we would go running together. A love of being physical, being active and being outside was something he instilled in me. — Jake Gyllenhaal

A Separation is another film that I think is extraordinary, and one of those things that feels like it's from another planet, much like Terrence Malick's movies did: at a certain point, you feel like he's an alien from another planet telling us and looking at us and showing us how we are. I also really, really love Jerry McGuire. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I grew up in a family where many of our close friends were gay couples. As well as that, every man goes through a period of thinking they're attracted to another guy. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Heath [Ledger] would walk up to a horse and could like silence the horse. Just literally he'd be like, 'Shh. Shh.' And then he'd get on the horse. I'd be like, 'I'm going to get on you.' They'd be like, 'F - off!' I didn't really have that style. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I am inherently a little brother - that's just my nature. It has to do with my sister being very strong and wanting to protect me. It's the natural order of things. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I think also what's interesting is that Maggie [Gyllenhaal] knows how much the choices that I make reflect what's going on in my life. Admittedly, probably, as my sister, and as someone who loves me - like, she can't wait to see become a father. — Jake Gyllenhaal

But you need to strive to try and communicate and try and change things in a similar way. And then people can think that's pretentious or whatever, but it's your life's work, and you've decided that. That's what they made us believe. So we have a pretty high standard, which is at times great and at times not. — Jake Gyllenhaal

When somebody's really good, they're not just thinking about their job. — Jake Gyllenhaal

When I walk into a screening, I'm nervous in a different way than I am as an actor. But the response is ultimately I know how I feel about it and that's what matters to me the most. — Jake Gyllenhaal

One of the skills I had to learn and become proficient in is kissing a man. I had never kissed a man. Will Smith did it in his movies, so did Jake Gyllenhaal, and I figured it was my time. So it was me and Steve Carell - fantastic. — Dwayne Johnson

I heard about the movie business before I even knew what it was. So I surround myself now with people who are like, 'Can we not talk about movies for an hour?' — Jake Gyllenhaal

Do you know what fear stands for? False Evidence Appearing Real. — Jake Gyllenhaal

People say to me, well "What's the character you really want to play?" And I go, I don't know. — Jake Gyllenhaal

By cool, I don't mean cool. I mean vulnerable and a mess. — Jake Gyllenhaal

There are lines that just stick with me, like I mean I still can remember it's like every line that I say from Nightcrawler, I mean it's just always there. — Jake Gyllenhaal

One of the things that I'm so proud of [about] that movie [Brokeback Mountain], was to see, within the past basically 10 years, how much has changed. When the Supreme Court [issued a ruling] just a little while ago, I felt like we had been part, a little part and parcel of that movement. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I have always had a deep belief that every movie, every artistic expression, is political. Don't be fooled. Even ones that we wouldn't consider overtly political are political. When we spend time doing anything, whether it's distraction or whether it's something that we have to face, it is always political. That's my belief. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Sometimes love is calm and easy and sometimes it's just plain dirty. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I think I find tactile things, you know. Just the feeling of blood itself is enough for me. If you, even if it's not real blood. I mean that's enough, like sometimes there are very simple things that are enough. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I wasn't really quite sure where Heath Ledger came from, and I think that's the feeling most people got when they were around him and why he was so extraordinary. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Other people's belief changes you. We all have insecurity, and uncertainty, and to have that glow cast over you by somebody that you respect, makes a gigantic difference. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I try and find and access the parts of myself that still blindly believe and have faith in a lot of things. I don't mean to be cynical, but I've also discovered that I still have a lot of those. And they may not be where I expected them to be. Maybe I've been in relationships, and this is a movie about relationships, like romance relationships - so maybe I've been in some that have sort of made me lose my faith. But deep down inside, I still have blind faith. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Ask yourself why a red carpet is red. It could be any colour. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I'm not trying to have Jake Gyllenhaal's baby. I'm not a major fashionista. I'm not going through a lesbian phase. I'm just normal. I'm just really freakin' normal. — Elizabeth Banks

I had been brought up in an elementary school where, my first few grades, I remember being specifically told that my teachers were gay. I was just that age and that was just how it was, and my parents were very ... You know, that's how I was raised. Like super-progressive. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Ang [Lee] gave us a lot of books about cowboys who had been gay or stories about it and all that stuff. And I just talked to a lot of my friends - who [was] their first, particularly same-sex, first situation. That was fascinating to me - trying to learn what that was in a certain period of time. Certain age. The secrecy involved in it. All those things. — Jake Gyllenhaal

As Uta Hagen would say, there's the representational actor and the presentational actor. My sister [Maggie Gyllenhaal] came up to me recently after she saw this movie, Southpaw, the movie I did, and she thought there was this exploration of that type of presentation, and a bit of representation as well, if I could be totally honest, where she was deeply moved. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I don't think I'm sharp enough to not prepare and come on set and kill it. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I don't think you can approach any piece of art with boundaries or rules. I think respect is a very important thing, but I also think what we discover along the way is really important. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I was working with Michael Shannon and I was like, "Oh man I'm having trouble with this scene." And he's like, "Well, then just open it up." I was like, "But, the mark?" And I was like, what's wrong with me? And he was like, "Dude, what's wrong with you?" — Jake Gyllenhaal

One role blends into the next role. I mean, there's strange idiosyncrasies from roles that I play that I picked up that will never go away. — Jake Gyllenhaal

To me I just, I'm a geek when it comes to cinematographers . And when it comes to Robert and when it comes to someone like Roger Deakins who shot Prisoners and he shot Jarhead. — Jake Gyllenhaal

The idea of competition, particularly in a creative atmosphere, is always there. And, if you don't acknowledge that, you are doing yourself and the process a disservice. — Jake Gyllenhaal

To me Donnie Darko was about adolescence. And about how, as soon as you start to grow up and you sort of move out into the world, you realize everything is so trippy. That anything can be anything. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Crazy people don't sit around wondering if they're nuts. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Hardest emotion? They're all pretty damn hard; I don't know really if there's one specifically, but I do think, I don't know what's happening or what I'm feeling when I'm actually listening. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I think that we all have within us the potential for almost anything. If we play close attention to our lives, then we can get at it somehow. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Being a star doesn't last. That's not what life should be about. It's a complete illusion that really has nothing to do with you. For me, finding out about life is the most important thing. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I like the idea of the adventurer's spirit. I think that is very much what a man searches for, in a certain way. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I'm a harsh critic, you know? I am. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I've become obsessed with learning other languages in movies, because I was like, since I was like, but I learned how to box so why don't I just learn another language for a movie? — Jake Gyllenhaal

I think I'm generally - fear, fear is very still, so in terms of that kind of fear - there's so many different kinds of fear, but fear is something, particularly in movies, that's interesting, because it's created by the film maker, that was created by [David] Fincher, that's why he's brilliant. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I promise that, one day, everything's going to be better for you. — Jake Gyllenhaal