Enemy front

While Everest films in Italy, Enemy begins its Stateside media blitz. DirecTV has an exclusive (and unimbeddable) feature. There are new interviews at Yahoo and Huffington Post.

Some highlights:

There were a lot of challenges Gyllenhaal faced filming scenes twice — once as his professor character, Adam, and then as occasionally working actor, Anthony (each with their own beautiful blond paramour played by Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon, respectively). "I like working with actors who push me and who are more talented than me," Gyllenhaal said. "It always makes you better. I've had the opportunity to do that and in this case it wasn't true," he said of his scenes with himself.

On set, he tried different techniques, also acting opposite another actor who would later be digitally replaced with his own character. But he found it didn't quite work. "It became distracting," Gyllenhaal explained. "No matter how great other actor is — to see their choices was distracting because I knew I had already made other ones and I knew which way the story was going to go."

Instead, he preferred the tennis ball with the two dots. He would throw his voice to represent his other character — and if one were to watch it live on set, out of context, you might just think Gyllenhaal was going mad. "Boundaries got a little lost and that definitely affects you psychologically," the actor confirmed.

"I legitimately pictured a person in front of me," he explained. "This is going to sound odd, but I can picture and feel what it felt like in a moment that I had just done previously," he said, further describing a sort of sense memory he has, one that allows him to recall with precision exact film takes — often one of several. "Sometimes I can feel in my bones takes I've done," he says, admitting that his favorite ones don't always make the final cut.

When it comes to the two Jake Gyllenhaals in "Enemy," the idea might appeal to some, especially his female fans. But to him, having a duplicate version of himself just sounds like a bad idea. "I feel like there's enough of me to handle in just one of me," he teased.



Jake Gyllenhaal is pretty much the ideal candidate for a film interview. For what I do for a living, there's nothing worse than an actor who sleepwalks his or her way through an interview (though, considering how many he or she are often subjected to in a given day, it is at least understandable), not giving any thought to what is actually being said, just spitting out rehearsed line after line of predetermined PR-speak. I'm honestly not sure if Gyllenhaal would even be capable of that. He's quick-witted, but also puts so much thought into his answers that often I just want to interrupt and tell him that everything will be okay. It's obvious that Jake Gyllenhaal cares -- which is almost unique in a world in which it's cool not to care.

He told the story that suggests you two got drunk and came up with this idea.
Well, we didn't know how potent the wine was -- let's just say it that way. There were some moments that happened in our conversation. Not only did we connect and just sort of have an amazing discussion, but this woman turned to me at one point who was sitting next to us with her husband and she said, "I hate to interrupt your dinner, but I just want you to know that everybody always says that you look like my son. Can I show you? You are an exact duplicate of my son." And I was like, "Oh, okay." And she showed me this picture and Denis was like, "It's crazy! You look exactly alike!" And we didn't, in my opinion. But, it was the movie! How you could you not do a movie? Unless Denis planted this woman there [laughs].

So you didn't know what "Enemy" would be until that happened?
No, I didn't know what it was going to be until we sat there.

She should have a credit on the poster.
The woman? Yeah, I know. I bet that he planted her. No, but those things happened in our conversation -- those sort of fateful moments and I realized it was something that I had to be involved in.

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The makeup team from Prisoners won an award over the weekend at the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild Awards. Mowat on Jake:

“There are only a handful of actresses that will go to the lengths Maria did for a role. Her transformation was very real, right down to the progressive hollowing of her eyes. Both her and Jake were lovely to work with. It was actually my first time working with Jake. He was like an old-fashioned movie star; you just can’t take your eyes off of him. When he arrived on set the first day, he had long hair and a beard, which I had to get rid of. His initial ideas for the neck tattoos also had me worried. They were intended to be peeking out above his collar, which would have called for constant touch ups. But when it all came together, they were made more visible and he almost had a retro Russian look to him. The tattoos added to the mystery of his character to the point where you are not sure whether or not he is the guilty one.”

Mowat also worked on Nightcrawler. I'd be curious to hear what he has to say about Jake in that flick!

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Today's blast from the past: More clean-shaven Jake during Love & Other Drugs filming days: