Academy Award-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhall is one of the rare acting types who can star in both Roadhouse, a remake of the classic Patrick Swayze film, and star on Broadway in Othello opposite Denzel Washington within the span of a year. While it has helped him build an eclectic resume, it has also helped him grow as an actor in unexpected ways. In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Gyllenhall speaks about why he seeks roles that “freak” him out and one crucial technique he picked up from starring in Road House.
Gyllenhall was born with a lazy eye that has since corrected, but he is virtually blind without wearing strong contact lenses (he has 20/1250 vision). He believes this helps him as an actor, noting, “I like to think it’s advantageous. I’ve never known anything else. When I can’t see in the morning, before I put on my glasses, it’s a place where I can be with myself.” Notably, Gyllenhaal performed the scene in the 2015 boxing movie Southpaw in which his character learns about his wife’s death without his contact lenses to “force himself to listen more closely.”
Jake Gyllenhaal on Facing His Fears and Perfecting the Art of Performance
As for what steers Gyllenhaal toward his projects — ranging from Zodiac to Nocturnal Animals to Spider-Man: Far From Home to Road House and more, he admits to picking roles that “freak me out a bit… The feeling I want to have is, can I do it? That it’s going to ask of me things that I don’t know about myself yet.”
For example, one of the things that Gyllenhaal didn’t know that he could do was a classic “trailer line” — the type of quips that a character says that end up featured prominently in a film’s marketing. He explains, “To deliver a line that goes into a trailer, with the right gusto and belief, and even with the absurdity of it, it’s a mastery. There’s that thing, the camera’s pushing in and I’m always like, ‘Oh wow, this is when you see Bruce Willis do the line, the thing. And now I’m doing the thing. Like, oh God.'” It’s a type of style that Gyllenhall had to make happen for a film like Roadhouse. He continues, “It requires this ease, but focus. I’m in awe of people who can do it.”
