Jake Gyllenhaal is currently promoting his latest film, Southpaw, for which he went through the most gruelling workout of his career: six months of training to turn his previously scrawny body (he lost 30lb for Nightcrawler) into a ripped boxer’s. ‘You have to take advantage of the situations you’re in as an actor,’ he told The Sunday Times. ‘You can learn from the best in the world – people who do those things for real.’
Born into a privileged, well-connected family with a name traceable back to a Swedish noble line, Jake Gyllenhaal could have chosen an easier path (Kate Hudson comes to mind) but has picked varied and challenging roles instead, often political and often middle-budget.
And these are our first-world problems. Do we take the easy route or plunge along the rocky road that challenges, inspires, helps us grow and may push us to the limit (director Antoine Fuqua said he pushed Gyllenhaal in the ring so hard, ‘he broke up with his girlfriend’)? What are our priorities and what are we willing to compromise on…?
Do we risk a pay cut to move in a new direction and develop new skills or take the expected, safe career path? Or do we choose to devote more time to our families and risk being unable to progress in our careers?
Of course our personal relationships require hard work, tough decisions and compromise, too. Having recently met a decent guy with good values, who also ticked the on-paper boxes (tall, fit, good career etc), I soon realised that I had to call it off. He was a decade younger than me and he failed the traffic test – when you’re heading home after an evening out with a friend and you’re rooting for traffic because you enjoy his/her company so much.
And when I broke it off, I cried. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was because finally I’d met a man who just wanted to spend time with me. He didn’t care about the age difference, our varying ambitions and he certainly didn’t play any games. It could have simply been the guy’s words, ‘But I won’t ever meet anyone like you again. I don’t want to look for someone else.’ Who hasn’t experienced that?
Or it could have been as Jake Gyllenhaal once said, ‘I want, overall, to trust what I know is right. There have been many times when I haven’t.’
