From the sociopathic, hollowed-out scavenger of Nightcrawler to the desperate, bulked-up brawler in this month’s Southpaw, Jake Gyllenhaal has pushed his body and psyche to the brink, cementing his status as an Oscar front-runner and Hollywood’s most dangerous man.
“Do you actually want to know how many sit-ups I did?” Jake Gyllenhaal asks me. “Are you easing me into the question?”
We’re halfway through dinner at Gracias Madre, a vegan Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles—though neither of us is vegan—and there have been a few interruptions. A table of young women next to us has grown progressively louder throughout the evening, either because of successive margaritas or, more likely, because of proximity to the A-lister.
“How do you fall in love with a sociopath?” asks writer Dominic Sidhu in the inaugural issue of NeueJournal. “Jake Gyllenhaal connects to the core of his characters by opening his heart to the darkest parts of their worlds,” he continues, “The actor examines the empathy behind his complex performances, the magnetism in vulnerability and gives us a taste of the sweat behind his newest role in Southpaw.”
