Top 100 Jake Gyllenhaal Quotes
#1. I wasn't really quite sure where Heath Ledger came from, and I think that's the feeling most people got when they were around him and why he was so extraordinary.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#2. The idea of competition, particularly in a creative atmosphere, is always there. And, if you don't acknowledge that, you are doing yourself and the process a disservice.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#3. You can't just lump things into two categories. Things aren't that simple.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#4. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#6. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#7. I don't always think it's necessary for somebody to be nice all the time.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#8. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#9. I hope I'm a spiritual person. I'm trying to be a spiritual person.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#11. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#12. Often times it's really hard for me to articulate why I connect to something.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#13. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#14. What made me most courageous was that I realized I had to try to let go of that stereotype I had in my mind, that bit of homophobia, and try for a second to be vulnerable and sensitive. It was f**kin' hard, man. I succeeded only for milliseconds.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#15. I think I work as hard as I do now, because of a lot of lessons I've learned early on.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#16. 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?'
Jake Gyllenhaal
#17. I have a profound respect for cinematographers. That is my secret sauce. Like they are everything to me.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#18. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#19. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#20. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#21. The truth is most of the films that make a lot of money no one remembers, and I'm not interested in making films that no one remembers.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#22. When somebody's really good, they're not just thinking about their job.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#23. I'm a very political person, and I make political choices in my movies.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#24. I don't have a "I want to play this or that," I just don't have that. I've never been like that.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#26. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#27. 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!
Jake Gyllenhaal
#28. 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."
Jake Gyllenhaal
#29. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#30. The last name is pronounced Jill-en-hall. It's spelled with two l's, two a's. We have a song in my family; G-Y-Double L - EN - HAAL spells Gyllenhaal. It's a Swedish name. It's a family heirloom set to music.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#31. I started to realize I love study, I love the study of human behavior.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#32. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#33. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#34. Do you know what fear stands for? False Evidence Appearing Real.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#35. 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?
Jake Gyllenhaal
#36. You know, it's flattering when there's a rumor that says I'm bisexual. It means I can play more kinds of roles. I'm open to whatever people want to call me. I've never really been attracted to men sexually, but I don't think I would be afraid of it if it happened.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#37. 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?
Jake Gyllenhaal
#38. Even as an actor, I think like a storyteller. My parents raised us to look at the script.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#39. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#40. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#41. I promise that, one day, everything's going to be better for you.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#42. I like the idea of the adventurer's spirit. I think that is very much what a man searches for, in a certain way.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#44. I walk around thinking job to job, trying to not have regrets.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#45. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#46. Being a star doesn't last. That's not what life should be about. It's a complete illusion that really has nothing to do with you. For me, finding out about life is the most important thing.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#47. In work, never have any regrets and always leave everything on the field.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#48. I love storytelling, you know, beyond anything. I love a great story beyond a great performance. Storytelling is about what we all do together and how we collaborate together. A performance can be a collaboration in ways, but oftentimes it's one individual thing.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#49. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#50. I'm always nervous about it. You know, somehow, without even knowing it, I try and recreate the idea of what it feels like to go in front of an audience every night when I'm making a film. And that similar type of pressure and excitement before a scene, or preparing for a movie, so ...
Jake Gyllenhaal
#52. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#53. Sometimes what I actually love to do is go to a farm and get fresh milk or watch a pig get slaughtered.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#54. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#55. Heath [Ledger] was always somebody who I admired.He was way beyond his years as a human, in a way.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#56. 'Brokeback Mountain' takes all your conceptions of America, and the Western, and cowboys, and sexuality, and love, and it stirs them all up.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#57. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#58. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#59. There are a lot of different things that are spinning and connecting when your family sees what you do.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#60. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#61. At Columbia there's no performing arts department, so I was searching for it everywhere I could, and I took some photography classes and I ended up becoming fascinated with Eastern Religion, and ultimately it seemed to encompass the more abstract mind that I have.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#62. I admire actors and artists who devote just as much time to their life as they do to their work.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#64. When I was young, before school, my father would wake me up and we would go running together. A love of being physical, being active and being outside was something he instilled in me.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#65. I don't think I'm sharp enough to not prepare and come on set and kill it.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#66. I think my strength is to do a take all the way through. I am definitely not someone who can do a sprint. Maybe I am not that smart, but it takes me a while to find the moment, and I like to be pushed toward it.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#67. I love movies that are saying things that people might find odd at times. I don't find them odd at all. They give me comfort.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#69. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#70. 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."
Jake Gyllenhaal
#71. I did a lot of background and research on 'End Of Watch,' and I definitely used certain skills that I learned.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#72. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#73. I've learned over the years that freedom is just the other side of discipline.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#74. I think I'm generally - fear, fear is very still, so in terms of that kind of fear - there's so many different kinds of fear, but fear is something, particularly in movies, that's interesting, because it's created by the film maker, that was created by [David] Fincher, that's why he's brilliant.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#75. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#76. In that way, as an actor in particular, you're powerless. And so in that way as an actor in particular you can't make mistakes.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#77. Ask yourself why a red carpet is red. It could be any colour.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#79. I think that I have done work where I feel like I've challenged myself, and then what's even more confusing is I've done work where I think I've challenged myself and no one's responded to it, and no one's interested in it.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#80. I grew up on movie sets, so it was something I just found familiar. When I was growing up also, in high school, I would audition for things and my parents let me audition for things - with the thought that I wouldn't get them. And then I would get them ... sometimes, and it would surprise them.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#81. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#82. As an actor, I feel like I'm somebody who, when somebody gives me a mark, I don't want to hit it. I don't like that. But then, without even knowing it, I just hit it.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#83. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#84. I've never had sex with boxers on and it's an odd thing to watch actors do. That's not saying I haven't tried ... I just don't recommend it!
Jake Gyllenhaal
#85. I like that when you create you really do create with a very small group of people, and in that space, before it goes out to all these people, that's what I love.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#86. When you have the opportunity to choose projects, inevitably you start being moved towards the things that you're moved by, right? And that changes over time, as we change, right?
Jake Gyllenhaal
#87. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#88. It's amazing how the world has changed because, at that time [2005], a lot of actors didn't want to play a gay role.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#89. 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?
Jake Gyllenhaal
#90. My mum raised us on classic movies and a lot of musical theatre.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#91. 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?'
Jake Gyllenhaal
#92. My parents taught me as a kid: do your work. Do it well. Try as hard as you can, whatever it is. It will one day, for the long [run], it will make some sort of change somewhere.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#93. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#94. 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.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#95. Really, contrary to popular belief, I like to have a good time and not take myself too seriously.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#96. Dad, I may not be the best, but I come to believe that I got it in me to be somebody in this world. And it's not because I'm so different from you either. It's because I'm the same. I mean, I can be just as hard-headed, and just as tough. I only hope I can be as good a man as you.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#97. To me Donnie Darko was about adolescence. And about how, as soon as you start to grow up and you sort of move out into the world, you realize everything is so trippy. That anything can be anything.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#98. 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
Jake Gyllenhaal
#99. As an actor, no matter what, you're at the whim of so many other people all the time.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#100. As a producer, you have an opportunity to see the whole and bring people together.
Jake Gyllenhaal
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