Jake Gyllenhaal Character Quotations

There's always an intellectual side to the films Ang Lee's doing and to the characters, and there's such a deep knowledge when you've worked with the actors that he's worked with, on stage in particular, but also in film.

I think, in the initial process of discovering a character and the analytical process - and this is what I did take from Buddhism - initially I think there has to be an analytical, intellectual approach. And that has to be abandoned by the time you're playing the game.

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.

When you find theater writing like in the theater on film but it's realistic, it doesn't matter who the character is, you want to do it.

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

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.