Best 132 quotes of Jake Gyllenhaal on MyQuotes

Jake Gyllenhaal

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    Ang Lee just allowed me to make what we would call mistakes and had no judgment of them. He also empowered me. You know, he's like, "You're my actor. I chose you. Whatever you do is right." Right? "I made the decision, I'm complicit in choosing you. And I went through everything I could to choose you, so I feel good and whatever you're going to do I'm going to give you this space." And so it was very empowering.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    As an actor, I feel like I'm somebody who, when somebody gives me a mark, I don't want to hit it. I don't like that. But then, without even knowing it, I just hit it.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

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

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

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

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    As much as I am one for real human interaction, I also want to make a show that's entertaining and that people want to see.

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    At Columbia there's no performing arts department, so I was searching for it everywhere I could, and I took some photography classes and I ended up becoming fascinated with Eastern Religion, and ultimately it seemed to encompass the more abstract mind that I have.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    Being the youngest, I constantly have that insecurity of being the youngest, which ultimately is probably my drive. in a lot of ways. In terms of as an artist, the way we could communicate as a family very clearly was through movies and through acting, and when things became complicated with all of our own personalities, that's where we are most clear. I think that's also where we are most brutal with each other as well.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    'Brokeback Mountain' takes all your conceptions of America, and the Western, and cowboys, and sexuality, and love, and it stirs them all up.

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

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

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    Chris Cooper once told me to never have any regrets. After Chris said that to me, I walk into every scene thinking, 'exhaust every possibility.' Once you get to a certain place, it's like you just deliver everything you've got. Don't have any regrets. It pops up in my mind over and over and over again.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

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

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    Dad, I may not be the best, but I come to believe that I got it in me to be somebody in this world. And it's not because I'm so different from you either. It's because I'm the same. I mean, I can be just as hard-headed, and just as tough. I only hope I can be as good a man as you.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    Do I take care of my body and take conditioning seriously? Yes.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    Don't listen to what anybody says except the people who encourage you. If it's what you want to do and it's within yourself, then keep going and try to do it for the rest of your life.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

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

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

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

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    Every man goes through a period of thinking they're attracted to another guy.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I admire actors and artists who devote just as much time to their life as they do to their work.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I always say about that movie [ Brokeback mountain], which I think maybe over time is more understood, is that this is about two people desperately looking for love. To be loved. And who were probably capable of it. And they just found it with someone of the same sex.that does not dismiss the fact that it is about, really, primarily, the first kind of very profound gay love story. Hopefully it can create an equality of an idea: that is, it's possible that you can find love anywhere.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I can't not have something attached to like what actually happens in real life. Like I can't do a romantic comedy without there being something where like, in the case of Annie Hathaway's character, her character ends up having Parkinson's, you know? To me, I feel like that's love, you know? Like to me. So every movie has to have that kind of sense of that.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I could draw ideas. I remember writing a paper for a seminar class. I remember writing a paper about - and this is going to sound really sort of pretentious, but that's where my mind was at the time - how acting and the performing artist can really be like a Bodhisattva, how they can communicate ultimately an idea in a way that can move and shift things. And that was wonderful. I didn't know many classes where I could try and relate the thing that I really loved and wanted to do into an intellectual idea, and that happened to be one of them.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I didn't know many classes where I could try and relate the thing that I really loved and wanted to do into an intellectual idea.

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    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, 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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I don't think I've made a mistake. I think I have behaved in ways that I am proud of; I think I've behaved in ways I'm not.

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I get off on the interaction with people, and I love the chess of a movie and particularly - not only in preproduction or in production or postproduction - the behavioral chess. That is, learning and being humbled by and also teaching certain people certain things. I love that. As a producer, you have an opportunity to see the whole and bring people together.

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    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.

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I have a mentor. I have... guides. I have a lot of guides. Not a lot, but people whose opinions I really respect and who I will turn to.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I have an overactive brain, and as a result of that, I can really get in my own mind. So I like to try and exercise it to the point of exhaustion.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

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

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    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

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I know exactly what that movie's [Brokeback mountain] about. I can't define it; it doesn't tie up in a perfect bow. But it's about adolescence. It's about what it feels like - this isn't meant as a criticism, but like things I didn't relate to, which were high school movies. Where I'd watch it and I'd be like, "Well, am I like the kid that nobody likes? Or am I like the person who everybody [likes]?" I couldn't [tell]. I was like quantifying, putting me in a box. "This is my personality at that age" and "I'm this kind of person" just felt like bullshit to me.

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I like the conscious manipulation that a great director can have. When you're both complicit in the manipulation of an emotion.

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

    I love movies that are saying things that people might find odd at times. I don't find them odd at all. They give me comfort.

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    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.

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    Jake Gyllenhaal

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

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    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...