The Loneliest Places

30 October 2005

'My experience on Jarhead was lifechanging,' says Jake Gyllenhaal. 'Because I've worked with directors a lot who thought I was a certain thing and fit me into that box, you know. And Sam wasn't like that at all. And Ang is, though I hate the word, an auteur. The last two movies I shot, though I didn't know it at the time, were really about loneliness - and what you find in the loneliest of places. Plains and mountains that go on forever, deserts that are hot and dry with nothing growing ... and go on forever. That's why I gravitated toward them, I suppose.

'Some movies you fall a step behind,' he adds, '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." I didn't have to fake it or put on a mask - all the resources I had inside me were more than adequate. I don't want to pretend to be something ... I'm not pretending any more to fit somebody's mould. That's a longwinded statement but - why not do what you really think, even if it's a mistake?'

Source: Jake's progress, guardian.co.uk