Jake Gyllenhaal character choice would always be to play hard to love complicated roles.
Jake Gyllenhall 32, is known for taking on complex roles and readily admits he is always drawn to a character that has 'hidden depth', his latest example is Detective Loki, in 'Prisoners' a role he can get his teeth into.
Gyllenhaal said: "I look for something in the story that offers love in a more complicated way. I don't look for darkness, whatever that means, but in my mind, darkness acknowledges great light too. I think when it comes to a character, I'm moved by folk that I might struggle to love at first; characters that I have to do enough research on and think enough about to be able to really fall in love with them. Recently, in particular, that's what's been happening. I love Detective Loki. I found it hard to let him go."
The star also spends a great deal of time researching his roles, watching over a 100 hours of footage of police interrogation for a three minute scene in 'Prisoners' - and even pushing himself to the "point of exhaustion".
Gyllenhaal was quooted in the Gaurdian newspaper as saying: "I don't think my approach to acting is all necessarily in service of the character. I think, selfishly, I've put it in service of myself, my perspective on the world and helping my life. 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. I think I took all the work from research but I used it therapeutically, too, in a strange way. I realised with that type of research how much it changed my life and what a wonderful thing the job of acting is, in that it can give you perspective on the fact that what you do really isn't that important at all."
Tagged in Jake Gyllenhaal