In Defense of Jake Gyllenhaal
The puppy-eyed actor, so fabulously crushable as recently as two years ago in “Love and Other Drugs,” has been recently overshadowed by men like Ryan Gosling and Joseph Gordon Levitt in everything from chick flick roles to the part of my own heart devoted to actor crushes. Is this fair? No. Are these men any greater than the ever-adorable Gyllenhaal? Gosling may have sharper abs (okay, he definitely has sharper abs) and Gordon Levitt may have a permanent and irresistible twinkle in his eyes, but does that negate the deep blue of Gyllenhaal’s eyes? It does not.
Gyllenhaal not only has the major qualifications of leading men — charm and the ability to look good with his shirt off — but he has those secondary characteristics as well. He has acting range (I’ve never seen Brokeback Mountain but I would imagine the skills needed for that were quite different than those in Donnie Darko, or that ridiculously hilarious stoner movie, Bubble Boy) and he can, apparently, even transfer those skills to the stage.
Today, Gyllenhaal is starring not only in new action movie “End of Watch,” (which started September 21) but is also premiering on Broadway in the new play, “If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet” (opened September 20).
So let’s bring the spotlight back to a man who deserves it. Let the teenage girls of America once again hang posters of this glorious male upon their bedroom walls. Let him return to his former state of objectification. And let such important discussions of his facial hair as that mentioned here get greater acclaim than they have until now.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
