Jake Gyllenhaal's fellow Tony Award nominee used to help him run his lines

6 October 2021

Jake Gyllenhaal has revealed Andrew Burnap used to "help" him "run his lines".

Jake Gyllenhaal

The 'Guilty' star and Tom Hiddleston lost out on the Best Leading Actor in a Play prize at the 2021 Tony Awards last month, and Jake has revealed the winner, star of 'The Inheritance', Andrew, is actually an old friend and he was thrilled that he won over himself.

Appearing on 'The Howard Stern Show', Jake shared: “Did I want to win? Sure. But I don’t really. I was so… I know Andrew, who won. The kid who won. I mean, the great thing about him, he used to help me run lines. He used to come to my office and help me run lines for a couple things.

“It was amazing. When he went up, I threw my arms around him. I was so excited for him.”

The 30-year-old actor was honoured for his role as troubled playwright Toby Darling in Matthew Lopez's play about AIDS, inspired by the novel 'Howards End' by E. M. Forster.

Andrew beat off stiff competition from movie stars Jake and Tom, both 40, who were shortlisted for their respective roles as Abe in 'Sea Wall/A Life' and Robert in 'Betrayal', as well as Tom Sturridge, who played Alex in the former play, and Ian Barford for 'Linda Vista'.

Meanwhile, the 'Southpaw' actor recently admitted he felt "trapped" while filming 'The Guilty'.

The movie star features in Antoine Fuqua's crime thriller but was forced to sit in a chair throughout the project, which was shot in just 11 days.

Jake, who plays the role of 911 call operator Joe Bayler in the movie, recalled: "It was 20 pages a day shooting 20-30 minute takes. And I thrive in that space, but I was trapped in a chair. Antoine trapped me in a chair.

"Every time I wanted to move, I'm a very physical person, a very full-bodied actor, and to only be a chair and having to express ended up doing a number on me as we got farther and farther into the story.

"Stillness is one thing, but then being trapped is another thing, and it brought out a lot of feelings in me and reveals a lot about this character too."

Jake had to hear lines delivered by other cast members over Zoom and explained how the cast had to get their timing right to make sure they didn't talk over each other.