Jake Gyllenhaal is known as an actor who goes through incredible physical transformations in order to get into his onscreen roles. For Southpaw last year, he famously trained with boxing pro Terry Clayborn for eight months, doing up to 2,000 crunches a day and packing on 15 pounds of rippled muscles to become Billy “The Great” Hope. Before portraying a nocturnal paparazzo in Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal lost close to 30 pounds by eating mostly kale salads and religiously running 15 miles a day. But for his new film, Demolition, opening in theaters Friday, April 8, the biggest physical transformation he went through was letting his body hair grow out.
As the 35-year-old actor told the crowd after the film’s premiere at SXSW, “I was actually a little embarrassed to play the part because sometimes I felt like the character was really close to myself, but that’s all that [director] Jean-Marc [Vallée] wanted,” Gyllenhaal said. “I’m thankful to him for that.”
