Jake Gyllenhaal | Biography, Movies, Prisoners, & Facts (2024)

Jake Gyllenhaal (born December 19, 1980, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an American actor known for the intensity and commitment he brings to his portrayals of a diverse range of characters. His notable films include Donnie Darko (2001), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and Zodiac (2007).

Early life and career

Gyllenhaal is the youngest of two children born to Naomi Foner, a Golden Globe-winning screenwriter, and Stephen Gyllenhaal, a director. His sister, Maggie Gyllenhaal, became a noted actress and director. Their parents’ work afforded the siblings proximity to the film industry, and Jake Gyllenhaal began working at a young age. In 1991 he made his feature film debut, appearing as the son of Billy Crystal’s character in the comedy City Slickers.

Gyllenhaal continued to act, though most of his movies were directed by his father. These included A Dangerous Woman (1993), a romantic drama cowritten by Foner, and Homegrown (1998). In 1994 Gyllenhaal appeared in an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street that was directed by his father. After graduating from Harvard-Westlake School in 1998, Gyllenhaal attended Columbia University for two years before dropping out to pursue acting.

Films: Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, and Zodiac

Gyllenhaal’s first leading role was in the feel-good biopic October Sky (1999). He gave a breakout performance as Homer Hickam, who overcomes poverty to became an engineer at NASA. Gyllenhaal’s next film was Donnie Darko (2001), in which he played a teenager who sees visions of a human-sized talking rabbit that warns him of a coming apocalypse. Maggie Gyllenhaal also appeared in the movie. Though Donnie Darko was not initially a commercial success, it eventually developed a cult following. His other credits from 2001 include the comedy Bubble Boy.

Gyllenhaal later starred with Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl (2002), playing a store clerk who has an affair with a married coworker. In 2004 he appeared in the disaster film The Day After Tomorrow as the son of Dennis Quaid’s character. Though the movie received only tepid reviews, it was a box-office hit. Gyllenhaal was especially busy in 2005. His credits from that year include Jarhead, about U.S. Marines serving in the Persian Gulf War, and Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain. The latter became a media sensation with its candid portrayal of the clandestine gay romance between Gyllenhaal’s character and another cowboy, played by Heath Ledger. The film, adapted from a short story by Annie Proulx, earned rave reviews, and Gyllenhaal was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor.

In 2007 Gyllenhaal starred with Robert Downey, Jr., and Mark Ruffalo in David Fincher’s Zodiac. In the acclaimed drama, the three actors played characters obsessed with finding the Zodiac killer, who committed a string of murders in California. Gyllenhaal’s other credits from 2007 include Rendition, in which he portrayed a CIA analyst who begins to question the brutal interrogation of a suspected terrorist. In 2010 he shifted gears with the action-adventure film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Though it was expected to launch a franchise, the film was a box-office disappointment.

Better received was Source Code (2011), an innovative thriller about the use of an experimental machine to prevent a terrorist attack. After portraying a police office in the action movie End of Watch (2012), Gyllenhaal was cast as a detective in Denis Villeneuve’s acclaimed Prisoners (2013), about the search for two missing girls. Continuing to show his versatility, Gyllenhaal played a troubled news cameraman searching for gruesome stories in Nightcrawler (2014). His films from 2015 include Southpaw, in which he played a boxer, and Everest, about a doomed expedition on the legendary mountain.

Gyllenhaal portrayed dual characters in Tom Ford’s thriller Nocturnal Animals (2016). He later had a supporting role in Bong Joon-Ho’s Okja (2017), about a girl’s relationship with a genetically modified pig. His other movies from the decade include the western The Sisters Brothers (2018) and Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019), about the comic-book superhero. In 2023 he starred in Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, a thriller about a U.S. Army officer and his interpreter during the Afghanistan War.

Stage work

Gyllenhaal often acted on the stage. In 2002 he made his debut on London’s West End, starring in Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth. During the show’s eight-week run, Gyllenhaal received largely positive reviews. In 2015 he appeared in his first Broadway production, Constellations. Gyllenhaal later acted in a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George (2017), and in 2019 he starred in A Life, which was staged with Sea Wall. Both were one-act monologues involving young fathers. Gyllenhaal earned acclaim—as well as his first Tony Award nomination—for his performance in Sea Wall. Later in 2019 he began appearing in Slave Play. The production was suspended in 2020–21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Gyllenhaal returned to the play for more than a month after it reopened in December 2021.