Jake Gyllenhaal could do absolutely anything next. Asked over lunch about his reading of a famed line in “Othello” — Iago’s seething “I hate the Moor” — the 44-year-old actor furrows his brow, runs his hands through his buzzed hair and ponders the performance I attended. “I’m trying to think about yesterday’s matinee, because it changes,” he says. “I’ve not made any sort of definitive choice.”
Soft-spoken and gently smiling, Gyllenhaal later summons the wide-eyed mania of his zanier characters — think his drunken “Okja” zoologist or Mr. Music of “John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch” — when the topic shifts to his eclectic body of work. “I’m just kind of random,” the Oscar nominee exclaims. “I guess as focused and intense as I can be, I also have a sense of, like, ‘That sounds fun. Oh, that scares me — I’ll give that a shot.’”
First there was method acting (sometimes it wins you an Emmy, sometimes it bristles your costars, sometimes it does both). Then a novel phenomenon called method dressing took red carpets by storm (remember Zendaya’s perfectly executed tennis-themed looks for her Challengers press tour?) Next up: The method dressing room.
