Phrases

-Every journey starts with fear.

-Don’t listen to what anybody says except the people who encourage you. If it’s what you want to do and it’s within yourself, then keep going and try to do it for the rest of your life.

-Do you know what fear stands for? False Evidence Appearing Real.

-Don’t listen to what anybody says except the people who encourage you.

-Crazy people don’t sit around wondering if they’re nuts.

-By cool, I don’t mean cool. I mean vulnerable and a mess.

-I’m open to whatever people want to call me.

-Everybody is an actor in one way or another. We are all performing certain things.

-I think that we all have within us the potential for almost anything. If we play close attention to our lives, then we can get at it somehow.

-I was listening to this Adele song, where she’s like, “When we were young…” I was like, “You’re 27. Are you kidding me?

-Romance is important, but to have a friend you can use as a mirror, who can give you an objective response, that’s what’s really important.

-There are standards. I like to be prepared, I guess I should say – that type of pressure of, “All right, now you go with abandon,” you know. Now when you’re in it, you let go of all the things – that’s what happens when you’re onstage.

-I’m at a period in my life when I’m figuring out my idea of who I am and what I want and how to hold onto love — all that big stuff. And I’m starting to realize that it can happen at any age. I know people who are in their 50s who are figuring out what they want and who they are, and I think it’s great. It’s like you’re always approaching life as a beginner.

-Masculinity is, nowadays and generationally, confusing. What is honor, what is protection, what is being a man? It’s evolving. But I believe having an open heart – and a strong mind to protect that – is the idea.

-I promise that, one day, everything’s going to be better for you.

-There are a lot of different things that are spinning and connecting when your family sees what you do.

-One of the things that I’m so proud of [about] that movie [Brokeback Mountain], was to see, within the past basically 10 years, how much has changed. When the Supreme Court [issued a ruling] just a little while ago, I felt like we had been part, a little part and parcel of that movement.
I had not spent a ton of time around animals as a kid.

-I don’t think I’ve made a mistake. I think I have behaved in ways that I am proud of; I think I’ve behaved in ways I’m not.

-Sometimes love is calm and easy and sometimes it’s just plain dirty.

-Often times it’s really hard for me to articulate why I connect to something.

-You can’t just lump things into two categories. Things aren’t that simple.

-I want, overall, to trust what I know is right. There have been many times when I haven’t.

-I didn’t know many classes where I could try and relate the thing that I really loved and wanted to do into an intellectual idea.

-I hope I’m a spiritual person. I’m trying to be a spiritual person.

-Sometimes what I actually love to do is go to a farm and get fresh milk or watch a pig get slaughtered.

-I hope I’m a spiritual person. I’m trying to be a spiritual person.

-I think I work as hard as I do now, because of a lot of lessons I’ve learned early on.

-Being a star doesn’t last. That’s not what life should be about. It’s a complete illusion that really has nothing to do with you. For me, finding out about life is the most important thing.

-I remember Chris Cooper saying to me – I was doing October Sky with him – and he said, “You know, you’re just yelling at me.” He’s like, “You’re just yelling. You need to listen.” We were in a fight, and you know, oh you’d get so excited as an actor, you’re like, “We have a fight, oh, I get to get mad.” And he just said, “You need to listen.” And I started listening – and then all of a sudden where I was listening was where, I don’t know, anger became something else.

-In work, never have any regrets and always leave everything on the field.

-I’m always nervous about it. You know, somehow, without even knowing it, I try and recreate the idea of what it feels like to go in front of an audience every night when I’m making a film. And that similar type of pressure and excitement before a scene, or preparing for a movie, so…

-You have formal rehearsal, a lot of things you don’t have in movies – which is, you have to formally rehearse. You have to know your back story, discuss it, and almost everybody onstage has to know each other’s [story], so that when it comes time to actually do it, you can throw it all away. That’s the way I like to – and I didn’t realize until very recently – that’s the way I like to prepare for movies.

-A Separation is another film that I think is extraordinary, and one of those things that feels like it’s from another planet, much like Terrence Malick’s movies did: at a certain point, you feel like he’s an alien from another planet telling us and looking at us and showing us how we are. I also really, really love Jerry McGuire.

-My mom would always say this thing about writing – and I’ve taken it into account in a lot of things in my life – which is just, “Make it shorter.” Figure out what you are truly saying, whittle it down to the essence, then say that.

-I was trying to figure out where my intellect, if I really have one, where it fit. And so I was searching. I really didn’t know who I was or what I really wanted to be, and in that search, like I think you do as an actor, you end up trying to define whatever that is, and I sort of said, “Oh well, searching spiritually in a way is interesting, and Eastern religion seems to be about a search.”

-Being the youngest, I constantly have that insecurity of being the youngest, which ultimately is probably my drive. in a lot of ways. In terms of as an artist, the way we could communicate as a family very clearly was through movies and through acting, and when things became complicated with all of our own personalities, that’s where we are most clear. I think that’s also where we are most brutal with each other as well.

-As Uta Hagen would say, there’s the representational actor and the presentational actor. My sister [Maggie Gyllenhaal] came up to me recently after she saw this movie, Southpaw, the movie I did, and she thought there was this exploration of that type of presentation, and a bit of representation as well, if I could be totally honest, where she was deeply moved.

-They’re the darkest people I know, comedians.
People say to me, well “What’s the character you really want to play?” And I go, I don’t know.

-I remember watching Meryl Streep in, The River Wild. There’s this scene where she’s has a gun pointed at her, it’s absurd in a lot of ways.

-Someone pulls a gun on her I think, I’m not really fully aware of the scene and she just, she starts, you see her terrified. And then all of a sudden she starts to burst out laughing. She starts laughing.

-Like she can’t stop laughing. Because she’s terrified and she’s emotional and there are no rules to what you’re supposed to feel. That to me is like A number one, that’s the thing I have to remind myself all the time.

-The Jake Gyllenhaal workout planstarts with growing long, long hairgorgeous greasy locks and then washing every day.Wash, shampoo, then condition. Washing works the biceps and then the triceps by conditioning. And vigorously rubbing all of your body with soap really defines the abs and the pectoral muscles. And if you do squats while you’re bathing – that’s it!

-Theater has given me a different perspective on the way I approach films.

-I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to
You know, it’s flattering when there’s a rumor that says I’m bisexual. It means I can play more kinds of roles. I’m open to whatever people want to call me. I’ve never really been attracted to men sexually, but I don’t think I would be afraid of it if it happened.

-I’m more Baskin-Robbins style myself.
I fooled around with Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams got pregnant.

-I love storytelling, you know, beyond anything. I love a great story beyond a great performance. Storytelling is about what we all do together and how we collaborate together. A performance can be a collaboration in ways, but oftentimes it’s one individual thing.

-I think I find tactile things, you know. Just the feeling of blood itself is enough for me. If you, even if it’s not real blood. I mean that’s enough, like sometimes there are very simple things that are enough.

-I think I’m generally – fear, fear is very still, so in terms of that kind of fear – there’s so many different kinds of fear, but fear is something, particularly in movies, that’s interesting, because it’s created by the film maker, that was created by David Fincher, that’s why he’s brilliant.

-I have an overactive brain, and as a result of that, I can really get in my own mind. So I like to try and exercise it to the point of exhaustion.
There are lines that just stick with me, like I mean I still can remember it’s like every line that I say from Nightcrawler, I mean it’s just always there.

-When I walk into a screening, I’m nervous in a different way than I am as an actor. But the response is ultimately I know how I feel about it and that’s what matters to me the most.

-Really, contrary to popular belief, I like to have a good time and not take myself too seriously.

-Every man goes through a period of thinking they’re attracted to another guy.

-When I was young, before school, my father would wake me up and we would go running together. A love of being physical, being active and being outside was something he instilled in me.

-There’s no shame in somebody who doesn’t necessarily do that job knowing a little bit more in that instance than you might know about your own job, you know, and I think that is where movies are such a collaborative art form.

-Ang Lee just allowed me to make what we would call mistakes and had no judgment of them. He also empowered me. You know, he’s like, “You’re my actor. I chose you. Whatever you do is right.”

-Right? “I made the decision, I’m complicit in choosing you. And I went through everything I could to choose you, so I feel good and whatever you’re going to do I’m going to give you this space.” And so it was very empowering.

-I think it’s more, at least at the time, a sense of abstraction. My mind doesn’t really work in a way where there’s a definitive sense of something. I go one way and then it opens up into a million different ideas, and somehow, when you look at the art, Buddhist art, or particularly Tibetan art, you know, it’s a similar thing. All of a sudden there are a million lotus leaves and you’re following one to the next and to another, and I related to that, and it felt simple and easy to me. And it made me feel smart.

-But you need to strive to try and communicate and try and change things in a similar way. And then people can think that’s pretentious or whatever, but it’s your life’s work, and you’ve decided that. That’s what they made us believe.

-So we have a pretty high standard, which is at times great and at times not.

-Not to say that you should be constantly trying to change the world, but I think it’s important to know that whatever we do has an implication and has an effect, and because of that it is political.

-Working with Jim Sheridan for instance, we did this movie Brothers. Jim will ask anybody – we’ll get a delivery on set, and like the poor delivery guy will be like, “Here’s your pizza,” and he’ll be like, “Come over here. Come here. I want to ask you a question. Do you think this is real? What do you think? Should we do another take?” And they’re like, “I, uh, you want your pizza?” There’s no shame in everybody’s ideas. There’s no shame in somebody not knowing.

-I think also what’s interesting is that Maggie [Gyllenhaal] knows how much the choices that I make reflect what’s going on in my life.

-Admittedly, probably, as my sister, and as someone who loves me – like, she can’t wait to see become a father.

-I don’t want to be lofty when I say this, but I don’t know what a success is any more. I know how we define it, but that was a moment where I went, “Wait, who am I?” You could feel the business, in particular, kind of go “He’s all right, let’s go over here.” I started to go, “Wait, I know why I love to do this.” I think I got off track in why I love to do it.

–I think my strength is to do a take all the way through. I am definitely not someone who can do a sprint. Maybe I am not that smart, but it takes me a while to find the moment, and I like to be pushed toward it.

-In that way, as an actor in particular, you’re powerless. And so in that way as an actor in particular you can’t make mistakes.

-I have a profound respect for cinematographers. That is my secret sauce. Like they are everything to me.

-I understand the opposite side of the camera. I have a profound respect for that. I have worked with people who, when you hit that mark, are doing 50 percent of your work for you. So, you know, it’s a balance. When you walk into a mark and you’re lit a certain way or something’s happening so often you don’t know what’s behind you… And that’s what’s so strange about being a movie actor.

-I think that I have done work where I feel like I’ve challenged myself, and then what’s even more confusing is I’ve done work where I think I’ve challenged myself and no one’s responded to it, and no one’s interested in it.

-I get off on the interaction with people, and I love the chess of a movie and particularly – not only in preproduction or in production or postproduction – the behavioral chess. That is, learning and being humbled by and also teaching certain people certain things. I love that. As a producer, you have an opportunity to see the whole and bring people together.

-We were talking about the kissing in the movie just recently. Clearly, it’s pretty challenging material, but Ang said two men herding sheep was far more sexual than two men having sex on screen.

-As an actor, I feel like I’m somebody who, when somebody gives me a mark, I don’t want to hit it. I don’t like that. But then, without even knowing it, I just hit it.

-Working with Robert, Robert [Elswit] is a storyteller. He’s not a cinematographer, he’s a storyteller.

-And to me, that’s the graduation I hope to get to in my profession. That I’m not just an actor, I’m a storyteller. And I think that takes a long time in, when you have one job on a movie set. Makeup artists, actor, whatever. To graduate from just that to storyteller.

-I also think within the scene, a specific scene – if I were to play a part that I played 10 years ago now, my interpretation of that scene would be totally different. I would be making different choices. Because I can’t somehow subtract all of the experiences that I’ve had in my life. And it’s fascinating to see, because somewhere I’m very reflective in that. You know, I’ve been playing basically actually close to 40 years old, so I’m somewhere lost in age in this movie. But it’s been fascinating to see that I can’t subtract that time.

-When I was younger, I did work with coach. I went to this place called Actors Space in the Valley. I was pretty young, and we were doing acting and improvisation. But no, no I didn’t go to RADA, I didn’t do that. But I do now work with an acting coach, primarily for the initial intellectual connection to the material.

-Even as an actor, I think like a storyteller. My parents raised us to look at the script.

-I always find you go back to an animal; it will always show you the sort of primal aspects of behavior. You always know how to respond if you choose that.

-Hardest emotion? They’re all pretty damn hard; I don’t know really if there’s one specifically, but I do think, I don’t know what’s happening or what I’m feeling when I’m actually listening.

-I don’t think I’m sharp enough to not prepare and come on set and kill it.

-Chris Cooper once told me to never have any regrets. After Chris said that to me, I walk into every scene thinking, ‘exhaust every possibility.’ Once you get to a certain place, it’s like you just deliver everything you’ve got. Don’t have any regrets. It pops up in my mind over and over and over again.

-The best thing that I got was rehearsing with my father. It was always about the process of figuring things out, and trying something new, and having another take on something and keeping it alive.

-Most of the things that I learn are from the women in my life.

-I think, in the initial process of discovering a character and the analytical process – and this is what I did take from Buddhism – initially I think there has to be an analytical, intellectual approach. And that has to be abandoned by the time you’re playing the game.

-You run your plays, you know your plays, you study your plays, you study the other team, you do as much as you can, you go to practice, you get in shape, you do what you need to do, and then by the time you get to the game, you know your plays, but they have to feel like they’re in your bones. That has to be an unconscious thing, it cannot be conscious. That is everything to me.

-The amount of preparation I saw from someone like [David] Fincher, and how aware he is of everybody else’s job on the set, and how much respect he has for every aspect of the film, and every aspect of the frame – that’s the type of actor I am now; it’s not the type of actor I was then. But without understanding his process, and then coming to learn it later on, I would never be the actor I am now.

-I think my family love each other so much and expect so much from each other, and I think we expect a type of honesty in the work that we all do.

-I think it’s important for every man to find the right woman and every woman to find the right man.
I love artists. I love watching other people work.

-I think, when someone say, “When did you feel like an actor?” it’s those moments when I feel like, “I’m an actor, wow.” That’s an extraordinary moment for me. So it’s not like I walk around going, “I’m an actor.”

-When you have the opportunity to choose projects, inevitably you start being moved towards the things that you’re moved by, right? And that changes over time, as we change, right?
It’s one of the most beautiful scripts [Brokeback Mountain] I’ve ever read, and it was Ang Lee, and at the time Heath [Ledger] was a friend of mine – before we even shot the movie – and always sort of alluring to me.

-As a producer, it starts when I talk about privacy and silence. It starts before anybody believes in it.

-And I think that’s, you have to have a real sense of self, and in order to push things through. And so often, what’s interesting, is how many people dismiss an idea that eventually everybody [gloms] onto. So to me it’s, that’s what I mean by hard.

-Sometimes you need an anchor, whatever it might be. You need a space to connect. So often you get into a way of doing things.

-Other people’s belief changes you. We all have insecurity, and uncertainty, and to have that glow cast over you by somebody that you respect, makes a gigantic difference.

-I was working with Michael Shannon and I was like, “Oh man I’m having trouble with this scene.”
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And he’s like, “Well, then just open it up.” I was like, “But, the mark?” And I was like, what’s wrong with me? And he was like, “Dude, what’s wrong with you?”

-I know exactly what that movie’s [Brokeback mountain] about. I can’t define it; it doesn’t tie up in a perfect bow. But it’s about adolescence. It’s about what it feels like – this isn’t meant as a criticism, but like things I didn’t relate to, which were high school movies. Where I’d watch it and I’d be like, “Well, am I like the kid that nobody likes? Or am I like the person who everybody [likes]?” I couldn’t [tell]. I was like quantifying, putting me in a box. “This is my personality at that age” and “I’m this kind of person” just felt like bullshit to me.

-I started to realize I love study, I love the study of human behavior.

-Ang [Lee] gave us a lot of books about cowboys who had been gay or stories about it and all that stuff. And I just talked to a lot of my friends – who [was] their first, particularly same-sex, first situation. That was fascinating to me – trying to learn what that was in a certain period of time.

-Certain age. The secrecy involved in it. All those things.

-We all develop relationships with each other based on our first relationships, and then how we experience them. But inevitably they are echoes of earlier on. In my belief.

-When somebody’s really good, they’re not just thinking about their job.