I missed out on movies because of my parents: Jake

Actor reveals how he lost important roles because his parents said no.

In a recent interview on talk show Inside the Actors Studio actor Jake Gyllenhaal recalled his early days in the industry, and the opportunities he missed out because his parents wanted him to continue school. Gyllenhaal made his debut back in 1991 with the movie City Slickers, alongside Billy Crystal but it was Disney’s major project following that, which he wasn’t unable to audition for — The Mighty Ducks.

“I remember them saying, ‘No’. That I was applying to junior high schools and that I had to apply,” he recalled, reported the Huffington Post. “I remember crying on the kitchen counter, telling them that I hated them.”

But that wasn’t the only time. The 32-year-old actor also revealed to host James Lipton that he auditioned for Ewan McGregor’s role in Moulin Rouge, and it was during this particular audition that he met his Brokeback Mountain co-star, late Heath Ledger, who also did not make it.

The actor was recently seen in a rather different avatar, sporting a lot of tattoos, in the crime thriller Prisoners, which released just yesterday. Also starring actor Hugh Jackman, Gyllenhaal plays the role of a mysterious detective in the movie. In an earlier interview with E! Online he said that the tattoos were created every day. “It was a daily thing,” he said. “The idea just came from the fact that I didn’t really want them to be seen, strangely. We had them put on and then it was about hiding them and I think that gave me something to play in a scene.”

He continued, “It was interesting for me to play against something. That hiding of something, those things that you might be ashamed of as a character, were sort of personified in the tattoos.”

Produced by Warner Bros. and directed by Denis Villeneuve, the suspense movie has opened to rave reviews, with a rating of five stars by Bloomberg.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th, 2013.

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