Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance in Nightcrawler could easily get him into the Oscars; it really is that great! He is an incredible actor with astonishing films under his belt, such as The End of Watch, Jar Head, Prisoners, Brothers, etc. And although he has always nailed his characters, this time, it may well be his best performance ever!
Nightcrawler is a pulse-pounding thriller set in the nocturnal underbelly of contemporary Los Angeles. Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a driven young man desperate for work who discovers the high-speed world of L.A. crime journalism. Finding a group of freelance camera crews who film crashes, fires, murder and other mayhem, Lou muscles into the cut-throat, dangerous realm of nightcrawling — where each police siren wail equals a possible windfall and victims are converted into dollars and cents. Aided by Nina, a veteran of the blood-sport that is local TV news, Lou thrives. In the breakneck, ceaseless search for footage, he becomes the star of his own story.
“There was a lot of preparation,” Gyllenhaal said during a roundtable I had in LA for Cinemovie. “The dialog was extraordinary… I memorized them like a play. For months, I spent hours and hours going over my lines in the streets of New York while walking from one place to another.”
“I had no life … we were shooting all night. I couldn’t get away from the character. I wasn’t eating enough. It was not like I could say the weekend arrived - Woohoo! Now I‘m going to be awake all day and eat.“ – Jake Gyllenhaal
Every aspect of Gyllenhaal’s character is strong. Not only his performance, but physically as well. He is 30 pounds lighter, cheekbones are out, and he has these bulging creepy eyes. “It was my idea to lose weight,” he said. “Initially, Dan (Gilroy, the director) and I agreed that Lou was like an animal. A coyote. So I tried to think how I could make it look that way and there arose ideas like physical transformation… Dan is very thin and talks a lot with his hands; I took these ideas from him…” Gyllenhaal took traits from different people he knows in order to bring out his character.
When production would stop filming, he never stepped out of character. During the process of making the film, Gyllenhaal decided to not go back to his “regular” routine, and instead decided to not eat or sleep much. “During the day, I was out of it. I was in it all the time. It was something that started to feed into my soul a little bit and my bones.”
And if you’re wondering how dangerous this could be? Well, we asked and he said, “There’s some strange safety for me which is probably a bit dangerous. You’re making a movie and you’re using it all for your work.” And what a great job he did!
NIGHTCRAWLER opens this Friday, October 31st!
