Jake Gyllenhaal Goes Another Round

Jonathan Wells April 16, 2024

Hold it! Before we jump in — and you’re properly introduced to the charming Mr. Gyllenhaal — I must first ask you a favour, for I fear I’ve been a little misleading. If it’s not too much trouble, could you quickly take another look at our most recent issue’s cover? Dart over to Instagram, if you need to. Or, shudder the thought, head to your local book store or supermarket. Go on, seek it out and give it another read. I’ll wait.

Okay? You back? Good. It says ‘JAKE GYLLENHAAL KICKS BACK,’ right? And, given his snug sweater — not to mention that reclined, cucumber-cool pose of his — you’d be forgiven for jumping to more casual conclusions, and thinking that the actor is kicking back in the conventional sense of the phrase. You know, taking some time out, catching his breath, maybe even meditating (actually he does do that, every day if he can find the time). But that’s not what I meant. In fact, quite the opposite. Because, while Gyllenhaal is kicking back, it’s less “R&R”, more “MMA.” You know — fight-picking, throat-kicking kind of stuff.

And you must only stick on Prime Video for proof of these moves. For Gyllenhaal’s latest film — a no-holds-barred spin on Patrick Swayze’s late-’80s punch-’em-up, Road House — stands tough-guy testament to the actor’s prevailing vim and vigour. In the film, he plays Elwood Dalton, a retired UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) contender tasked with safeguarding a brawl-prone bar in the sunbaked Florida Keys. Relaxing, this role is not. And, with those fierce tropical temperatures, there’s little screen time for snug sweaters, either.

But, besides all the stabbing and slapping (the slaps, in particular, will have you flinching on your sofa), Gyllenhaal’s latest role is also something of a metaphorical kick back — a rebuke to critics of his boxing drama Southpaw, the last time Gyllenhaal bulked up to play a professional fighter. The 2015 film struggled to land any solid hits with critics, and The New York Times even declared that Gyllenhaal’s strapping prizefighter “could not outbox the shadow of Robert De Niro’s Raging Bull performance.”

“The difference between boxing and MMA is great. While they’re both extraordinary arts, they’re so different. MMA is about wrapping all of the martial arts — including boxing — into one.”

Jake Gyllenhaal

With Road House, then, the actor is not only back in beefed-up mode — he’s come out swinging. Today, he joins us from New York, freshly returned from the film’s premiere at Austin’s annual South by Southwest Film Festival. And, all morning, positive reviews have been dropping. “Gyllenhaal makes Dalton sincere yet sarcastic, and his punches are so fast they practically stop time,” reads a glowing take in Variety. Rolling Stone has dubbed the film “a solid tribute to the art of bodily harm.” Empire is even calling Gyllenhaal’s Dalton “a new kind of action hero.” The actor’s seeing stars, then — but in a good way.

And rightly so. For Road House sees Gyllenhaal square up not only to professional stuntmen, but also go toe-to-toe with real-life, albeit retired, UFC fighters including Jay Hieron and — in a particularly gutsy piece of stunt-casting — Conor “Notorious” McGregor. “I already knew quite a lot about the world of UFC,” says Gyllenhaal, speaking to us from his Manhattan apartment. “I’m a fan. But the person who really made me aware of it was Conor McGregor. It didn’t come into the mainstream until Conor started to fight.”

The new Road House, directed by Doug Liman (of The Bourne Identity and Mr. & Mrs. Smith), was also the first movie to be filmed at a real UFC event, shooting scenes at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. This experience fully immersed Gyllenhaal into the world of MMA, and allowed him to get a feel for the sport in a way Southpaw did not. “And the difference between boxing and MMA is great,” adds the actor. “While they’re both extraordinary arts, they’re so different. MMA is about wrapping all of the martial arts — including boxing — into one.”

But these UFC scenes, which feature Gyllenhaal simulating a fight with startling, bone-crunching realism, feature only as flashbacks and dreams throughout the new film. Most of the melees are reserved for the titular bar. “So you’re not in a ring,” explains Gyllenhaal. “The fighting in Southpaw happened in a ring. But, in Road House, it’s all over the place. So the dangers that come with the actual physical stunts are different. You have tables, you have glass, you have things that you can run into. Even people. It’s a whole different thing.”

“I’m very glad that people seem to understand what we wanted to do, and what we set out to do with the film: to have a good time, and to exist in this sort of comedic action space.”

Jake Gyllenhaal on Road House

Gyllenhaal admits that, on set, he “definitely got clocked a couple of times by mistake,” and “cut [his] hand in a pile of glass at one point,” and even caught a staph infection. “But we trained not just in terms of strength, but also flexibility and endurance,” he adds, “so I didn’t really injure my body in any significant way — or not so much that it didn’t heal within a few weeks. And that’s what we wanted. Because, particularly at my age, you get to a place where you’re still really physically active, but a hit is different — a fall is different. So we were protecting ourselves from that.”

Gyllenhaal is only 43 years old, but even Patrick Swayze — who was almost 10 years younger when he made the original Road House — managed to break his ribs during filming. Gyllenhaal, who acted alongside the Dirty Dancing star in 2001 cult thriller Donnie Darko, feels that the new take on the film has the same spirit as Swayze’s 1989 version.

“I obviously don’t want to speak for Patrick,” says the actor, “but it’s just fun and risky, and I think he’d be okay with it. I think both of us understood the world of theatre, where actors interpret roles all the time — the same roles hundreds of actors have played. And I’m a massive fan of Patrick. I’ve seen, hundreds of times, Point Break, Ghost. You name it. I grew up with him. And working with him on Donnie Darko was wonderful. He was always lovely to me, even after the movie.”

In homage to Swayze, Gyllenhaal says that he hid messages and tributes to the actor in his Dalton’s tattoos. “I’d actually say the most significant ones are to do with Patrick,” he nods. “But they’re Easter eggs. You’re going to have to go and search for them!”

There are clear links to the original, then, but this Road House, a film Gyllenhaal says he instinctively agreed to — “I tend to be much more meticulous, and hem and haw over my choices” — is a different beast to Swayze’s. It begins at its grungiest; even darker than Donnie, and with the same late-night, sticky feel that made Gyllenhaal’s sickly 2014 noir, Nightcrawler, so unpleasantly compelling. There are more knifings, beatings, and moments of existential dread in the first five minutes of Road House than most full-length thrillers can muster in their entire run times. And yet, the film picks up and perks up before too long, lightening in tone as the action moves to the bright backwaters of Florida.

“It’s wonderfully, tonally absurd,” grins Gyllenhaal. “And I’m very glad that people seem to understand what we wanted to do, and what we set out to do with the film: to have a good time, and to exist in this sort of comedic action space.”

“One of the most wonderful things about being a performer is the ability to run the gamut, and try all different sorts of things. That’s the essence of what it’s about, in my opinion. I love being physical and moving around and being outlandish in performances — that’s fun. But I think there’s real power in stillness.”

Jake Gyllenhaal

It’s a space Gyllenhaal seems to have one foot in at all times. Recent roles, as a frenetic career criminal in Michael Bay’s Ambulance and an ersatz superhero in Spider-Man: Far From Home, both required the actor to balance theatricality with convincing action hero physicality. Many of his characters also share an unconventional sense of humour, whether that be twisted celebrity zoologist Johnny Wilcox in Bong Joon-ho’s Okja, or capricious art critic Morf Vandewalt in Netflix’s art world satire, Velvet Buzzsaw. But, while Gyllenhaal enjoys playing “larger” roles, there’s something about his more understated turns — the quietly obsessive Robert Graysmith in Zodiac, or lovelorn cowboy Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain (a role which saw him nominated for an Academy Award) — that he says feel even more powerful to play.

“There was a time in my career when people would say that I was so subtle in things,” says the actor. “But there runs a gamut in responses to the things that you do. I’ve played roles that are larger in expression, and ones that aren’t. In fact, the performances that I love are the ones with really deep subtlety; with a lot of inner work.

“One of the most wonderful things about being a performer,” he adds, “is the ability to run the gamut, and try all different sorts of things. That’s the essence of what it’s about, in my opinion. I love being physical and moving around and being outlandish in performances — that’s fun. But I think there’s real power in stillness.”

And yet — in terms of his career, at least — there’s been no sitting still (or, indeed, kicking back) for Gyllenhaal of late. This June marks the actor’s first significant foray onto the small screen, as he leads the Apple TV+ adaptation of Scott Turow’s bestselling legal thriller, Presumed Innocent. Despite its “very dark material,” the actor says that he was sold on the project from the pilot script, which sees his character, a legal prosecutor, suspected of murdering a colleague. That it was a longer-form project didn’t intimidate or discourage him.

“You know, I’ve made six-month long movies before,” he shrugs, “so the length’s not that much different. It’s more the amount of information during that period of time. I’d liken it to doing theatre. There’s a lot of dialogue, and a lot of things expressed through dialogue. In that way, it was almost like doing a theatre piece that was filmed, particularly in terms of the level of endurance it demanded.”

“Great things can be made if people know each other, and see each other’s weaknesses, strengths, and vulnerabilities. That’s what I do with these filmmakers, and that’s what I want to do more of.”

Jake Gyllenhaal

Gyllenhaal is no stranger to the stage. In early March, it was announced that he would be returning to Broadway in 2025, starring as Iago opposite Denzel Washington in Othello. But he’s been appearing in theatrical productions around the world for years. In 2017, the actor sang to rave reviews in a revival of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, and was even nominated for a Tony Award in 2019 for his performance in the wistful, one-act monologue A Life by British playwright Nick Payne. More than a decade ago, Payne became one of the first to foster Gyllenhaal’s theatrical talent when, in 2012 and 2014, he cast the actor in two back-to-back Broadway shows.

Similarly collaborative one-two punches have popped up throughout Gyllenhaal’s entire career. In 2013, he appeared in a pair of films from Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, Enemy and Prisoners. Antoine Fuqua cast him in Southpaw and also The Guilty, a remake of a Danish police thriller. And, this coming January, Gyllenhaal will be seen in another film from Guy Ritchie, with whom he collaborated last year on highly commended war drama, The Covenant. This second Ritchie picture pairs Gyllenhaal with Henry Cavill, and follows two extraction specialists forced to devise a high-stakes escape plan.

“I love Guy’s process,” says Gyllenhaal of his latest creative partnership. “I really enjoy his storytelling process, how he does things. It’s great. And, as a result of working with him, he’s now my friend. I think that relationship between two artists is a very sacred one.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it? You’ve got to move towards what intrigues you, and you can do that, particularly with a hobby like cooking.”

Jake Gyllenhaal

With Ritchie, Gyllenhaal explains, there’s not always a completed script when he signs on. Sometimes, the director may have only written 50 pages. Occasionally, it’ll even just be the nub of an idea, and he’ll work with his actors to build characters together. “And, sometimes, we’ll just figure it out on the day!” laughs Gyllenhaal. “There’s a real improvisational nature to the way that Guy works that I adore. But that’s what I look for, more and more as I get older, because I know that great things can be made if people know each other, and see each other’s weaknesses, strengths, and vulnerabilities. That’s what I do with these filmmakers, and that’s what I want to do more of. Even Doug Liman — we’ve been friends for 15, 20 years. And we’d been looking for a project to do together for that long, until Road House came along.”

Whether another collaboration with Liman materializes remains to be seen, but Road House is a solid opener — the film is Amazon MGM Studios’ most-watched produced film debut ever, with over 50 million worldwide viewers on Prime Video over its first two weekends. Part of this draw is surely Conor McGregor, who is cheekily “introduced” in end credits that also confirm a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo by musician Post Malone. These are just two of several multi-disciplinary stars who make appearances throughout the film.

But, outside of acting, Gyllenhaal himself has never given much serious thought to additional artistic pursuits. He has recently co-written a children’s book, The Secret Society of Aunts & Uncles (inspired by the children of his sister, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and her husband, actor Peter Sarsgaard), but he reveals that his greatest passion lies adjacent to the arts: cooking.

“I have a great love of reading,” he adds, “but that begins with a love of cookbooks. So I spend a lot of time cooking, and my instinct towards food — not just eating it, but also cooking it — has been that way for many years. Since I was a kid, really. So I’d maybe like to do something more with cooking, or even farming. It’s already a great joy of mine; my go-to. And I fancy myself pretty good at it.”

Just last night, Gyllenhaal says, his girlfriend — French model Jeanne Cadieu — sent him a recipe. Reading it “gave [him] this kind of itch,” so he headed over to his sister and brother-in-law’s house with some ingredients and cooked dinner for his nieces.

“What I love is to explore,” he explains. “I’ll find ingredients and then I’ll just figure out what I want. I’ll get inspired by something in a book, then sometimes just try to figure out how to make it myself. It’s funny, isn’t it? You’ve got to move towards what intrigues you, and you can do that, particularly with a hobby like cooking. And I love feeding my nieces, that’s the best. They’re just such wonderful people, and so smart and discerning. And they like my food — so that means a lot to me! Because I really do find the greatest calm in cooking for the people I love. I love it.”

“The people who really calm me are my family. The people who I love. When I’m around them, I’m at peace.”

Jake Gyllenhaal

And here he is: the calmer, truly kicked-back version of Jake Gyllenhaal. He’s a man we’ve always admired for hitting hard and playing big, but as he grows older the actor is finding new ways to work and live. That’s why his preferred process these days — whether he’s whipping up a pasta dish or cooking up a blockbuster — is simple: surround yourself with the right people. This may mean working with your brother-in-law (Sarsgaard also appears in Presumed Innocent), or continuing to collaborate with directors you trust. But, by finding others who share his values and vision, Gyllenhaal has not only discovered real creativity, but true calm.

“And the people who really calm me are my family,” he smiles. “The people who I love. When I’m around them, I’m at peace.”