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Movies & TV

The top 5 Jake Gyllenhaal performances

1. Lou Bloom, Nightcrawler (2014)

Gyllenhaal hollowed himself out to play predatory videographer Lou Bloom in Dan Gilroy’s Los Angeles tabloid nightmare, not just losing weight but draining his face of any emotion aside from ambition. His bug-eyed intensity becomes the character’s most disturbing quality – and that’s saying something, because Lou Bloom does a lot of really disturbing things.

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2. Adam and Anthony, Enemy (2013)

Denis Villeneuve’s knockout psycho­drama casts Gyllenhaal as both Adam, an unassuming Toronto academic, and Anthony, the look­alike actor he notices in the background of a movie. As Adam tries to figure out how there can be another person in the same city with his face, his world grows stranger and stranger – and Gyllenhaal charts his collapse in an entirely reasonable manner, which just plays up the creeping horror of what’s really going on. (We think. It gets pretty weird.)

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3. Donnie Darko, Donnie Darko (2001)

Two years after playing a wide-eyed dreamer in the generic studio drama October Sky, Gyllenhaal’s si­mul­taneously tortured and magnetic turn in Richard Kelly’s indie creeper repositioned him almost overnight as an actor to watch. Although it isn’t immediately obvious, Gyllenhall’s role is as demanding as Willem Dafoe’s in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ. And this 20-year-old kid makes it look ut­terly natural, even when he’s talking to a man-sized bunny monster. 

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4. Jack Twist, Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Ang Lee’s 2005 drama is really about Heath Ledger’s Ennis, who spends his adult life repressing his homo­sexuality and destroying his only chance at happiness. As his more confident lover, Gyllenhaal has considerably less time to show us his character’s own struggles and the des­perate need that drives him back to Ennis over the years. The role could have been a caricature of a spurned lover, but Gyllenhaal shows us the bone-deep pain behind everything Jack does – up to and including his final act of rebellion.

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5. Holden Worther, The Good Girl (2002)

Self-declared rebel Holden is another supporting role in a movie built around Jennifer Aniston’s miserable Justine. But Gyllenhaal invests the kid with enough life to be worthy of his own picture – even after he becomes so obnoxious and clingy that you’re kind of on Justine’s side when she flirts with the idea of poisoning him. Some guys just bring out the worst in peo­ple, you know?

normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner

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