Jake Gyllenhaal Quotes

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

I'm at a period in my life when I'm figuring out my idea of who I am and what I want and how to hold onto love -- all that big stuff. And I'm starting to realize that it can happen at any age. I know people who are in their 50s who are figuring out what they want and who they are, and I think it's great. It's like you're always approaching life as a beginner.

I was listening to this Adele song, where she's like, "When we were young..." I was like, "You're 27. Are you kidding me?

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

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.

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

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.

It's one of the most beautiful scripts [Brokeback Mountain] I've ever read, and it was Ang Lee, and at the time Heath [Ledger] was a friend of mine - before we even shot the movie - and always sort of alluring to me.

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.

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.

It's daunting trying to do any service as an American to such a beautiful, fluid speech pattern that you [British] all have. We are just barbarians in comparison.

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.

There's no shame in somebody who doesn't necessarily do that job knowing a little bit more in that instance than you might know about your own job, you know, and I think that is where movies are such a collaborative art form.

I think it's more, at least at the time, a sense of abstraction. My mind doesn't really work in a way where there's a definitive sense of something. I go one way and then it opens up into a million different ideas, and somehow, when you look at the art, Buddhist art, or particularly Tibetan art, you know, it's a similar thing. All of a sudden there are a million lotus leaves and you're following one to the next and to another, and I related to that, and it felt simple and easy to me. And it made me feel smart.

I've become obsessed with learning other languages in movies, because I was like, since I was like, but I learned how to box so why don't I just learn another language for a movie?

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.

In work, never have any regrets and always leave everything on the field.

I love 'Training Day' - that's a great movie.

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

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

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.

I think I find tactile things, you know. Just the feeling of blood itself is enough for me. If you, even if it's not real blood. I mean that's enough, like sometimes there are very simple things that are enough.

When I walk into a screening, I'm nervous in a different way than I am as an actor. But the response is ultimately I know how I feel about it and that's what matters to me the most.

Often times it's really hard for me to articulate why I connect to something.

Other people's belief changes you. We all have insecurity, and uncertainty, and to have that glow cast over you by somebody that you respect, makes a gigantic difference.

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

In a perfect world, I would love to do one play for every three movies.

You can’t just lump things into two categories. Things aren’t that simple.

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

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.

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.

Masculinity is, nowadays and generationally, confusing. What is honor, what is protection, what is being a man? It's evolving. But I believe having an open heart - and a strong mind to protect that - is the idea.

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

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.

Not to say that you should be constantly trying to change the world, but I think it's important to know that whatever we do has an implication and has an effect, and because of that it is political.

Sometimes you need an anchor, whatever it might be. You need a space to connect. So often you get into a way of doing things.

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.

I don't think I'm sharp enough to not prepare and come on set and kill it.

Uta Hagen would say, there's the representational actor and the presentational actor.

On a spiritual level, on a place where you want to be a better human being and listen more, I try. I joke, but it has. I mean, I don't consider myself a card-carrying Buddhist, you know. But I do believe deeply in the ideas, and I think anytime you have interest in anything, it somehow humbles you.

I'm open to whatever people want to call me.

I remember watching Meryl Streep in, The River Wild. There's this scene where she's has a gun pointed at her, it's absurd in a lot of ways. Someone pulls a gun on her I think, I'm not really fully aware of the scene and she just, she starts, you see her terrified. And then all of a sudden she starts to burst out laughing. She starts laughing. Like she can't stop laughing. Because she's terrified and she's emotional and there are no rules to what you're supposed to feel. That to me is like A number one, that's the thing I have to remind myself all the time.

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.

The best thing that I got was rehearsing with my father. It was always about the process of figuring things out, and trying something new, and having another take on something and keeping it alive.

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.

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, when someone say, "When did you feel like an actor?" it's those moments when I feel like, "I'm an actor, wow." That's an extraordinary moment for me. So it's not like I walk around going, "I'm an actor."