Jake Gyllenhaal life and biography

Jake Gyllenhaal, born Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal is an American actor. The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Gyllenhaal began acting at age ten.

He has appeared in diverse roles since his first lead role in 1999's October Sky, followed by the 2001 indie cult hit Donnie Darko, in which he played a psychologically troubled teen and onscreen brother to his real-life sister, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. In the 2004 science-fiction film The Day After Tomorrow he portrayed a student caught in a cataclysmic global cooling event, alongside Dennis Quaid as his father. He then played against type as a frustrated Marine in Jarhead (2005). The same year, he garnered critical acclaim and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination as Jack Twist in the film Brokeback Mountain opposite Heath Ledger.

Jake graduated from Los Angeles' Harvard-Westlake High School and studied for a year at Columbia University in New York before dropping out to pursue acting.

On making the bridge from child to adult actor, Gyllenhaal purposefully passed over teen fare for such films as 1999's October Sky and Drew Barrymore's Donnie Darko, for which he earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination. The roles that followed echoed in complexity: Jennifer Aniston's troubled love interest in 2002's The Good Girl, 2002's Lovely & Amazing and 2005's Brokeback Mountain, a love story of two cowboys caught in a homosexual liaison that earned him a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination in addition to winning him the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

In spring 2002, Gyllenhaal starred on the London stage in Kenneth Lonergan's revival of This Is Our Youth. The actor received an Evening Standard Theater Award for his portrayal.

Gyllenhaal dated actress Kirsten Dunst from 2002 to 2004. He's been linked to Reese Witherspoon since 2007.

On the show Entourage, Gyllenhaal, though not featured on screen, was the replacement for Vincent Chase in Aquaman 2 after Chase was fired. This was likely a reference to Spider-Man 2, when Gyllenhaal almost replaced Tobey Maguire.

Gyllenhaal played the lead role in the movie adaptation of the video game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and released by Disney on May 28, 2010.

Films:

1991 City Slickers
1993 Josh and S.A.M. ; Dangerous Woman, AA Dangerous Woman
1998 Homegrown
1999 October Sky
2001 Donnie Darko
2001 Bubble Boy ; Lovely & Amazing
2002 Highway ; Moonlight Mile ; Good Girl, TheThe Good Girl
2003 Abby Singer
2004 Day After Tomorrow, TheThe Day After Tomorrow
2005 Brokeback Mountain ; Jarhead ; Proof
2007 Zodiac ; Rendition
2009 Brothers
2010 Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time ; Love and Other Drugs ; Nailed
2011 Source Code

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