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Jake Gyllenhaal has admitted that he once thought he had to be perceived as a "serious method actor" in order to win awards, before coming to the realization that acting is "stupid" and that his job as an actor should be "fun and filled with joy."
The Ambulance star hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend and his monologue reflected on the last time he fronted the show—back in 2007, when he was promoting Brokeback Mountain and there was a "George W. Bush sketch" and "jokes about the first iPhone."
The 41-year-old discussed how he ended up with a "reputation for being this serious, intense method actor" despite not being "good" at it, and explained how he got into method acting for his role in the 2014 action thriller Nightcrawler.
"But honestly, I wasn't even that good at method acting," he explained. "I remember for this movie Nightcrawler, I went to the director and I was like, 'Get ready for me to lose 48 pounds and win the Oscar.' And then a week later I was like, 'How would you like to see an actor lose 36 pounds and win the Golden Globe?' And then I showed up on set and I was like, 'You're looking at a guy who gained 10 pounds and doesn't care about awards!'"
In fact, Gyllenhaal did end up losing 30 pounds for the role, he told Variety at the time. But in striving to be a "serious" actor, Gyllenhaal now says he "forgot how to have fun."
The actor conceded that acting is "pretend" and should be fun, not so intense and dark.
"That's when I realized something I should have realized a long time ago—acting is a really stupid job. It's pretend! And it's fun and it should be filled with joy," he said "Well, I'm finally embracing that joy again, and that's why I'm back standing on this stage!"
The actor then broke into a rendition of Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" with backup from Ego Nwodim, Cecily Strong and Chloe Fineman.
The concept of method acting was thrust back into the spotlight last year when Jeremy Strong of Succession fame's intense method acting process was outlined in a divisive New Yorker profile.
In the viral piece, Strong, 42, detailed his intense immersion into playing the character Kendall Roy in the HBO drama—seemingly to the annoyance of his co-stars and crew members and even to the point of causing injury to himself.
"To me, the stakes are life and death," he was quoted as saying in the piece. "I take him [Kendall Roy] as seriously as I take my own life."
