What Hollywood thinks of Jake Gyllenhaal

Stock History: "From then on, Gyllenhaal seemed to be picking his next projects by thumbing through old Oscar yearbooks: Jarhead with Sam Mendes, Rendition with Gavin Hood, Brothers with Jim Sheridan, and Zodiac with David Fincher. To so carefully return to these prestige picks (even if they didn’t all work) after a blockbuster seemed like the move of a man confident he had ticked CGI and stunts off his life-experience list and was done with it.
And yet, after building his résumé and his profile (his relationship with Reese Witherspoon regularly landed him on the covers of tabloids), he beefed up to play the ab-tastic hero in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. A Jerry Bruckheimer production based on a video game, the movie cost around $200 million and grossed $90 million domestically (it took in $244 overseas, so was not an abject failure).
Market Value: Gyllenhaal has the physique and charm of a leading man and the résumé of a serious actor. And were he happy to stay in that niche, he would be an unqualified success. However, the fact that he has shown interest in a big-budget, action-hero career to balance out his serious films means we need to look at his potential in that arena, where he’s not just a big actor who doesn’t have a franchise, he’s a big actor who has a failed franchise. The fact that the audience didn’t show up for Prince leaves Gyllenhaal as one of the highest-profile box-office unknowns working today: a very famous actor who can and does anchor mainstream prestige pictures more frequently than just about anybody, but who can’t guarantee any return except critical acclaim.Should Love and Other Drugs hit, it will prove Gyllenhaal can appeal to mass audiences in the right project. But the female-friendly Love won’t make him an action hero, which is, unfairly or otherwise, still the brass ring of bankability. (There’s also the gross-friendly guy-humor niche, but other than with Bubble Boy, Gyllenhaal has never shown much of an interest in comedy until Love and Other Drugs.) For the action-hero route, Gyllenhaal’s hopes rest with Source Code, his action movie about a soldier zapped into another man’s body to solve a train bombing. But with its Inception-esque plot and director (Duncan Jones, following up Moon), Source Code seems to be more of a thinking man’s thriller than a straight popcorn movie. What Hollywood Thinks: Hollywood thinks Gyllenhaal has acting chops, but they’re not sure he’s meant for blockbusters. Says an agent, “He’s a good actor. He transformed his body lifting weights, but I don’t think guys buy him as an ‘action hero.’ I mean, he’s extremely well-represented: [CAA] moved heaven and earth to get him into Prince of Persia, but it still didn’t work.
And what is that right franchise? “I’d put him in smaller films and let him be a star there,” says the agent. “He’s poised to have Phil Hoffman or Sam Rockwell’s career: good indie work over a long, long time. Or Sean Penn’s career. Sean is somebody who’s never quite done the big, commercial movie. He gets offered the big action movies all the time, but he always turns them down.” The manager uses the B-word: “He hasn’t found a franchise like that Bourne series. He’s bounced around, worked with interesting filmmakers, taken risks as a young actor that a lot of people wouldn’t. He seems to have gotten a little lost.”
Scans of Jake Gyllenhaal in Total Film (UK) magazine

The Analysis: Does Gyllenhaal really even need a Bourne (or an Iron Man, or a Batman)? There are plenty of movies — many of the best ones — that could use a big name to confer respectability and secure publicity for a film, but that no one expects to be a smash. In fact, this is the very description of almost all of Gyllenhaal’s movies up until Prince of Persia. What changed with that film is that Jake Gyllenhaal movies are now being marketed as Jake Gyllenhaal movies, a fact you can see in the publicity for both Love and Other Drugs and Source Code.
Scans of Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway in "Your New York" magazine

Bottom Line: We don’t see him as the next Bruce Willis, and hope that Prince of Persia cured his blockbuster urge. But if Gyllenhaal is insistent on dabbling in big-budget entertainment, he could grow into a Clooney-esque figure with dashing heroic roles; until then, his taste on the other end of the mass-entertainment spectrum has held him in good stead, and will continue to do so". Source: orvillelloyddouglas.wordpress.com

"Jake understands some people may perceive him as a big Hollywood star, he doesn’t like to focus on whether he’s cast in a lead or a supporting role.
“I don’t see myself like that at all”, he told Total Film magazine when asked how he feels about his leading male status.

“That’s very result-orientated. I’ve been like that at different times in my career, but at this point I’m not. I think people look at me a little bit like that, but I don’t.”
“I’ve been the lead in a lot of different movies but it’s never been about that. It’s funny. I was at some event for Prince of Persia and Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage were there. And there I was standing with them thinking ‘What the hell am I doing here?” he laughed". Source: www.musicrooms.net

"He tells Britain's Total Film magazine, "Viagra has a huge booklet on what it is, the side effects and all the chemical components. I would memorize these things. And we would improv them and then I would sell to the doctors when I had learnt from them."

But the cheeky star refuses to confess whether he's tried Viagra, joking, "There are some things I have to keep for myself!" Source: www.torontosun.com