In all the conversation regarding this year’s Best Actor race it’s sort of stunning that Jake Gyllenhaal is not getting the attention he deserves for his performance (or should that be performances?) in Tom Ford‘s “Nocturnal Animals.” Sure, Denzel Washington (“Fences”), Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”) and Ryan Gosling (“La La Land”) are pretty much considered locks, but the other two slots are wide open. That being said, considering how he was snubbed for both “End of Watch” and “Nightcrawler,” should we be surprised The Academy is taking Gyllenhaal’s gifts for granted?
Gyllenhaal plays two different, but connected characters in ‘Animals.’ The first is Edward Sheffield, the ex-husband of Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) and a writer about to publish a new novel. The second is the fictional Tony Hastings, as Susan imagines her ex in the lead role as she reads his manuscript. The latter is a dramatic ride for Gyllenhaal and like many of his co-stars he’s absolutely riveting in it.
An Oscar nominee for “Brokeback Mountain,” Gyllenhaal sat down to chat about his latest endeavor a few weeks ago.
How did the project come your way and what made you want to do it?
[Tom] sent it to me. I knew Amy was attached to it. He offered me the role. Sent me the script. I remember reading it and then I had a phone call with him a few hours later. I remember sort of being left vibrating from the screenplay. Like shaken. Shook up by this, particularly the initial scene, that scene in the desert. It was written so brilliantly. And how these storylines intertwined and then how it ended. I think how it ended really put a stamp on the whole story for me. Then he talked to me about how the story was to him. That he had a scenario in his life that he always regrets and he wrote for this situation and was very vulnerable to me about it and his feelings. And the reprise of the visual elements and things in the story that keep coming up and they are connected and how he wanted to shoot it and how he wanted my wife to look like Amy and they would both be redheads and how he wanted Amy for a very specific reason. And he had picked me for a very specific reason and I think all of that together just, it hit me pretty hard in a period of six or eight hours. This piece, this vision of his piece came to me. And I said I wanted to do it on the phone. In six hours I had decided to do a movie with little thought.
Is that quick for you?
I definitely take my time most of the time. This is maybe the third time. This is also pre-reading a script and wanting to audition and do it desperately and maybe getting it. Sometimes in your career you want to do it really badly and it’s not yours. In terms of it being offered to me, maybe twice it’s happened?
Did you know Tom at all before you were offered the role?
I’ve known Tom for a little while. I’ve seen him around. I think I had these preconceived ideas. Like I was having what seemed like an honest conversation and he was upfront and I feel like I have a pretty good barometer for honesty in that way. So, I felt that from him always and when we started working together, one of the things I said to him was, ‘Knowing you. Your reputation as an aesthetic being very important to you, if we were in a moment and there was an honest moment happening and it didn’t look pretty to you and you stopped the take because of it I would get very upset.’ And he said, ‘I would never do that.’ And he was true to that in his word absolutely in that. In the end, always it’s his final say. He gets to cut things out that he doesn’t want to, but that’s not my process. It’s his process. But in his process he was so respectful to my character and the process.
When I spoke with Aaron Taylor-Johnson he mentioned that during that initial scene – the highway confrontation – Tom let you all improv a bit and figure some of it out yourselves. Did that surprise you?
I had asked that of Tom early on. ‘Can you not cut after the scene has ended because stuff can happen. Magic can happen.’ And I think he just started to enjoy that. It’s easier when you are in a more intimate scenario. I like continuing cause you never know what’s going to happen. When you are in an uncomfortable situation you don’t have the context and the security of a scene that’s written and you are outside of it sometimes something can happen. Something new and real and alive can happen. You sort of all the normal things you find in security have been thrown away. I asked that of him and he started to like it and do it more often and I don’t consider that improv but I do consider that undoing structure. He always knew in his own mind when he was going to cut anyway. And and I’ve heard Amy talk about it — we did interviews yesterday. He’ll roll the camera. He’ll roll a whole mag out, 20 minutes. He’ll just see what’s going to happen. As an actor I just love that. I love the room for that space to play around and see what’s going to happen.
Did you see many of those extra moments in the final film itself?
Maybe a few things, but he ended up sticking with his [original] structure. If you can take three things from six mags you roll 20 minutes on or you can take that same philosophy and put it into another actor and another situation? Who knows? Maybe he wouldn’t have rolled on Amy like that. She shot after we did. He hadn’t practiced that in the process with us. I dunno. There are a few moments. And there is some great behavior he picked that I love. There is a moment with Armie Hammer when he spills the sugar on the counter in this pristine, clean world and according to Amy that was a mistake and it’s a wonderful ‘mistake,’ it’s not as written. And that behavior is in there and it means so much in that moment. It resonates with me when I see it. Those things.
“Nocturnal Animals” opens in limited release on Friday.