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Jake Gyllenhaal


Though he may have started out as a boy in a bubble before moving on to brooding teen (Donnie Darko), much-younger-object-of-affection (The Good Girl) and eventually love-sick cowboy (Brokeback Mountain), Jake Gyllenhaal can now add sculpted, sword-brandishing action hero to his resume with the release of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

The affable, blue-eyed thesp recently touched down in Toronto to chat about his turn as Prince Dastan, why his British accent made co-star Ben Kinsgley lose his lunch and learning the ins and out of Parkour. And - bonus - he's seriously funny.


CINEPLEX: So what made you want to do this film? Did you read the script and you thought: "Sixth century Persian prince, that's so me?"

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: "I think for me it was just a sense of like, doing something totally different. And then also doing something where, you know, I played a character who was in the same vein as characters I loved as a kid, like Indiana Jones and movies like Errol Flynn and... those types of characters, those types of actors were the actors I loved and this character seemed within the similar kind of realm of those. From the very first sequence he's in, he's doing a ton of action, but he's having a great time, enjoying himself. So that attracted me to it."

WATCH THE INTERVIEW, TRAILERS AND CLIPS


Donnie Darko - action hero (Andrew Cooper/Disney Studios)

CINEPLEX: So how did it feel when you first put that costume on?

JG: "Hmm. I've never gotten that question before....It was really cool actually. You know, the costume is like a uniform, it gives you a sense of where you are. It took about 40 minutes every day to put the costume on, from like the boots to the...

CINEPLEX: Wow.

JG: "Yeah, the leather arm straps and all the red sash, you know the red sash took a lot of wrapping and stuff. [laughs] I mean I love the character, I love playing the character, and you know, it's fun dressing up like that.

CINEPLEX: And how about the British accent? What did it feel like the first time you spoke in it?

JG: "When I finally got it, which was, uh a few months down the line, which I had done a lot of work to get to - it felt great. I mean, I remember sitting there with the actors for the first day I really felt like I nailed it, because at the beginning of the rehearsal period, Mike Newell, who was our director, would say to me: [adopts grandiose British accent] 'Don't worry my boy, just say the accent. Be confident!' So I'd walk in and be like you know, doing this horrible accent...I think the first time I did it, Ben Kingsley like puked into a trash can.

CINEPLEX: Oh. Not a great reaction.

JG: Alfred Molina [who plays Sheik Amar in the film] was like calling his agent, 'Can, uh...is there any way you can get me out of this?' [laughs] But when I finally did get it, I remember all the actors who were primarily British, all kind of treating me differently. You know, it was like when you're in Canada, and you say to them, 'I like hockey' and then everybody treats you differently...

CINEPLEX: Like, you're one of us?

JG: You walk in and you're like, 'I'm not, I'm not sure if I like hockey.' everyone is like 'Hmm', not gonna interact [well together] and then you're like, 'No, I like hockey,' and then they're like, they're like...

CINEPLEX: High-fives all around?

JG: "'All right, come on in!'"

CINEPLEX: So tell me about Parkour [a French sport/discipline known as l'art du déplacement]. What was it like training for that and how many of your own stunts did you do?

JG: "I really did only the most difficult stunts. I left all the easy ones up to the... no um, I did, I would say about 65 per cent of the stunts in the movie. Anything I'm not doing in the movie I tried. And learning parkour was difficult. It's a difficult sport to learn at twenty and I was twenty seven at the time. I think you need to start when you're a kid, really. That's when you learn these like almost instinctual things that they do, which is, you know, jumping from a building 25 feet with a fifteen foot drop and not injuring yourself."

CINEPLEX: You may not know that this movie is opening and it has some stiff competition with Sex and the City 2 being released on the same weekend. Why should people go see Prince of Persia?

JG: "I think at this point, it's just a massive, huge, fun film for families and kids and I don't think I'd recommend kids going to see Sex and the City 2 [laughs]. But, you know, maybe for some people...? I made the movie because I was thinking about, you know, how I would feel as a kid when I would see a movie like this. And I think that's what I'm hoping for for kids and for families to go see it and the rest is up to everyone else."

--

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time opens in Cineplex theatres on May 28.



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