As a stage and screen actor, Jake Gyllenhaal is in the business of making realities from language. His personal theories on acting are like a re-spun version of the linguistic propositions in J. L. Austin’s 1962 book How to Do Things with Words. The British philosopher proposed that language didn’t merely communicate but enacted. A promise, a command, a warning, a declaration (“I now pronounce you man and wife!”)—such performative speech acts, Austin said, didn’t just describe the world but intervened in lived experience. Gyllenhaal, by interpreting the instructions of the script, transmutes the written word into an embodied text. “Acting is an interpretation of somebody else’s text,” he says. “So, if you’ve ever written an essay, it’s about writing an essay with your behavior.”

Movement talks in even his earliest adult roles: As Homer Hickam in biographical drama October Sky (1999), his shuffling gait conveys an earnestness as much as anything he says, and his tortured smirk is among the most memorable elements of his performance as the lead in Donnie Darko (2001).

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Jake Gyllenhaal pulls his glasses out of his jean jacket pocket, the Coke bottle lenses in them strong enough to correct his 20/1250 vision. Yes, you read that right. These are not Internet Boyfriend glasses, to be styled with a fuzzy cardigan and a rakish smile. These are I Literally Can’t See glasses. Looking through them with normal vision feels like being on some sort of a hallucinogenic.

Gyllenhaal, 43, has been wearing intensive corrective lenses since he was about 6. Born with a lazy eye that naturally resolved, he’s still legally blind. “I like to think it’s advantageous,” he says. “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.” He has used his blindness sometimes to help him as an actor — when he was shooting a difficult scene in the 2015 boxing movie Southpaw, one in which police tell his character that his wife has died, Gyllenhaal removed his contacts to force himself to listen more closely.

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Jake Gyllenhaal is your Host for the Season 49 finale of Saturday Night Live — and for the Road House actor it feels like “graduation.”

“It’s the season finale right before Season 50, which is… amazing. Being on the show has always been a dream,” Gyllenhaal told NBC’s Mark Barger in a new interview. “I got to do it for the first time, do it again, and then the finale feels like some sort of graduation of having been able to survive and do it. It’s an honor. It’s a great honor.”

When the 43-year-old, who previously hosted SNL on January 13, 2007, and most recently on April 9, 2022, is asked what he remembers about his first time hosting he says, “I remember my very first monologue, I remember singing Dreamgirls, and I remember having a dress on underneath a suit. And I remember hoping, so hoping that it wouldn’t reveal until the moment.”

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Jake is featured on the cover of the Spring 2024 issue of L’Officiel Hommes (Italy) magazine. The spread includes a brand new photoshoot and interview with Jake. You can read the interview behind the cut, and view the photoshoot in our gallery. Digital scans have also been added to the gallery.

Gallery Links:
Magazine Scans > 2024 > L’Officiel Hommes (Italy) | Spring
Photoshoots & Outtakes > Sessions > 2024 > Session 2 [L’Officiel Hommes]

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Jake Gyllenhaal stopped by Late Night With Seth Meyers yesterday to talk about his new film, ‘Road House’. Follow the links below to watch the interview on Youtube, or download the videos in our media section.

Gallery Links:
Public Appearances > Publicity Shows > Late Night With Seth Meyers
Screen Captures > Television > Publicity Shows > Late Night With Seth Meyers