Jake Gyllenhaal Quotations

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.

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.

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

We were talking about the kissing in the movie just recently. Clearly, it's pretty challenging material, but Ang said two men herding sheep was far more sexual than two men having sex on screen.

I've learned over the years that freedom is just the other side of discipline.

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.

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.

I think family is the most important thing in the world. I think your own family is the most complicated thing in the world, and I think it's the most beautiful thing in the world.

I think it's important for every man to find the right woman and every woman to find the right man.

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

When you have a lot of opportunities, which I am blessed to have had in terms of my work, you get into the habit of not paying attention to certain specifics. And as we get busy, anything we do is the same thing.

I think as an actor you have to be open to your emotions - that's how you tap into other characters. Besides, by being so open I've come to terms with how screwed I am!

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.

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.

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?

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

Theater has given me a different perspective on the way I approach films.

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.

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?'

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

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.

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

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.

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.

When I was in 'Jarhead,' I felt really good about my body, really confident,

Working on a movie like 'Prince of Persia' was awesome. It was great fun to be an action hero and to jump around, running off walls and fighting and having great quippy lines.

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.'

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.

I wouldn't call it a western, ... I would call it a love story that happens to take place in the West.

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.

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

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?'

If it does shed light on the idea that there's real love involved ... it's great. When two people love each other, they love each other. And people should hold on to it as hard as they can, whether it's homosexual or heterosexual.

We made out, and they had a baby.

I thought Heath had broken my nose while we were filming that scene. Both Michelle and Ang kept insisting the kiss had to be more fierce, more intense, more passionate, so Heath pushed me against the wall and came in really hard for the kiss.

I think that more and more there's a sense that the best performances I can give are the ones that are the truest to who I am. The further I move away from who I am, the worse they are.

I think something more formulaic was expected. But this movie is not just about the experience of a soldier, but also of a human being. We live in a world that is not always full of action.

I thought I was a long shot, but this was a role I was going to fight for.

That was so scary, the last scene Heath and I shot together. We finally get to say to each other what we want to say, and I was really nervous because there were so many emotions, and both men have been holding so much back. Luckily, the dialogue is so great that it worked out.

My character's the one that kind of initiates these sexual encounters, which to me was, like, totally foreign.

Usually, the action's moving so fast, you don't get the opportunity to see the psychology, really,

There have been times when I've been working with women and they just said, 'Hey, I've faked it before. I can fake it again.'

But obviously, it means a hundred million things to other people. It's one big question. So, naturally, people have a lot of answers.

You get to see the actors put through the wringer.

Ang was great ... because he would set up situations and then let me and Heath decide what to do within the space Ang created.

Ang Lee is fierce in his timidity, his humbleness and his respect for everyone around him. He's frustrating and so damn wise.

There's inevitably a lot of talk about things like that,

The sheep were interesting. They were the easiest thing. They just naturally herd, and they are naturally stupid.

As an actor, it's a constant question of whether I will ever get hired again ... (but) this idea is so important, and if that meant for a couple of takes I was going to have to make out with some guy, then so be it,

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

This means even more to me socially than artistically. It's just a pleasure to be a part of this movie and I can't even believe I've got this for it.

As well as that, every man goes through a period of thinking they're attracted to another guy.

It was really the most beautiful love story I had ever read, and I couldn't not do it.

It was at a point where I realized that like I had told Sam before we started 'I'll throw up in the sand for you. I'm gonna do anything I can for you,' but I never thought I would chip off my tooth for him. That's permanent,

It's a wonderful love story -- a freaky, awesome ride with crazy characters,

For me, it was hard in a different way than with Heath. Because I think Heath was kind of constantly being pushed back by Ang, pushed back into his skin, and he wanted to come out. I had heard all these stories from actors who had warned me that after the first day of work, Ang said, 'You'll get better.' So I was waiting for that. And the first day of work he walked out to me and said, 'Great job.' And I was like, 'Uh-oh, that's not good.

I've had a lot of people say to me after the film, to my surprise, 'Thank you for making it. It's made a social impression, and that social impression to me is the aftermath of an artistic impression, and so much more important.

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.

I'm like, 'What world am I living in?' Aren't movies made to have something to say? Why make a movie if you don't have something to say? What are you doing it for? Are you doing it because you want to make a lot of money?

I grew up in L.A., so the idea of same-sex relationships is hardly foreign to me. I think there comes a time when everyone asks himself about his sexuality. That doesn't mean you experiment, but you definitely think about your preferences.

I had a lot of people saying to me, to my surprise, thank you for making it.

If you're going to spend seven months of your life - for me seven months, for Roland Emmerich, 3, 4, 5 years of his life - doing something, I think you have to have something to say.

I remember being in college knowing I didn't want to go anymore. I wanted to try and become an actor. There is a something in me, with a risk of sounding cliche, that I just had to do it. I knew from an early age that acting was my path.

I don't think my approach to acting is all necessarily in service of the character. I think, selfishly, I've put it in service of myself, my perspective on the world and helping my life.

If, for some reason, you could... wanna be with me heart and soul, I'll be waiting for you at 5pm outside Chunky Cheese - The Good Girl

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

For some reason, ... I just got so angry that I had chipped my tooth ... and just started hitting him and we didn't talk for a month after that.

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.

You run your plays, you know your plays, you study your plays, you study the other team, you do as much as you can, you go to practice, you get in shape, you do what you need to do, and then by the time you get to the game, you know your plays, but they have to feel like they're in your bones. That has to be an unconscious thing, it cannot be conscious. That is everything to me.

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.

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.

I think I'm not in this work to not look at life as it is. I'm not in it to say, "I want to wear a mask and escape," you know. I want to know what's happening in the world, and I want to have it touch me in a way that I can do something, my little part like that, and have it somehow translate.

Working with Jim Sheridan for instance, we did this movie Brothers. Jim will ask anybody - we'll get a delivery on set, and like the poor delivery guy will be like, "Here's your pizza," and he'll be like, "Come over here. Come here. I want to ask you a question. Do you think this is real? What do you think? Should we do another take?" And they're like, "I, uh, you want your pizza?" There's no shame in everybody's ideas. There's no shame in somebody not knowing.

I think, now, younger generations do take that for granted in a lot of ways. I don't think that takes away from the struggle of identity and what that is. But the struggle for identity is everybody's struggle. No matter what it is.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We all develop relationships with each other based on our first relationships, and then how we experience them. But inevitably they are echoes of earlier on. In my belief.

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.

I had not spent a ton of time around animals as a kid.

I think I work as hard as I do now, because of a lot of lessons I've learned early on.

The amount of preparation I saw from someone like [David] Fincher, and how aware he is of everybody else's job on the set, and how much respect he has for every aspect of the film, and every aspect of the frame - that's the type of actor I am now; it's not the type of actor I was then. But without understanding his process, and then coming to learn it later on, I would never be the actor I am now.

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

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.

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

There are standards. I like to be prepared, I guess I should say - that type of pressure of, "All right, now you go with abandon," you know. Now when you're in it, you let go of all the things - that's what happens when you're onstage.

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?"

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

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."

I think my family love each other so much and expect so much from each other, and I think we expect a type of honesty in the work that we all do.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.