Jake Gyllenhaal

Onscreen he wears angst and desperation like a badge of honor. Raging in the existential cult drama Donnie Darko (2001), crossing the fine line between passion and obsession in last summer's The Good Girl (in which his character, one Holden Worther, lugged a beat-up copy of The Catcher in the Rye across Texas in writer-director Miguel Arteta's shout-out to Salinger's protagonist), mourning the loss of life and youth in Moonlight Mile, Jake Gyllenhaal has become the movies' poster child for outsider, misfit characters. Not content to sit back and fit neatly into any one (or anyone's) category, he's shooting his first action movie, Roland Emmerich's Tomorrow. With a quirky hangdog charisma evoking Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967), Gyllenhaal proves infectiously unpredictable onscreen and in interviews, as his pal Chelsea Clinton finds out.

CHELSEA CLINTON: Jake! How are you?

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: I'm good, thanks. Where are you? In London?

CC: Actually I am in Oxford, at school.

JG: Hmm. I dropped out of college, you know.

CC: [laughs] I know, my dear. And where are you now?

JG: I'm living it up in New York City right now.

CC: You told me recently that you're making an action movie. Will I see you on the screen baring your muscles and striking a rather exciting, dashing figure?

JG: [laughs] Yeah. We're shooting on Martha's Vin--no, not Martha's Vineyard--Montreal.

CC: I wish you were shooting on Martha's Vineyard.

JG: I remember going to your father's 51st birthday on Martha's Vineyard, where we met. Both our families are friends with the Danson-Steenburgens [who hosted the party], and I was invited.

CC: We sat together at dinner.

JG: And we just immediately started talking. I'm going to the Vineyard next week with my mom.

CC: Your mother's such a heroine.

JG: She is. As is yours.

CC: Yes, she is. My parents are actually coming here, and I'm thrilled. My lather has visited me, but this will be the first opportunity I'll have had to share my Oxford with my mom.

JG: What are you studying, by the way?

CC: I am getting an MPhil, which is essentially a master's, in international relations. I am in the second year of a two-year program, currently working on my thesis. Tell me, how is your family? How's your sister?

JG: Maggie's great. She's doing this movie [Mona Lisa Smile] with Julia Roberts and a whole cast of beautiful women. She's working really hard. And her movie, Secretary, is doing so well.

CC: Her movie is doing so well. My mother liked it. But let's talk about you. You're making this action movie: Who are you in it?

JG: I'm Dennis Quaid's son. Does that say enough?

CC: No, not really.

JG: Okay. It's called Tomorrow. It's about global warming, which, unfortunately, is a subject most people don't read up on. Maybe if it's presented in spectacular fashion they'll listen. You know?

CC: Right. Well, speaking of reading, are you reading anything interesting?

JG: I happen to be rereading my favorite book, [J.D. Salinger's] Franny and Zooey. Have you read that book?

CC: I have. Have you also read The Catcher in the Rye?

JG: Of course. Many times, actually.

CC: How old were you when you first read it?

JG: I think I was 12. We went on a family vacation to Hawaii, and my sister gave it to me for Christmas, and I remember I couldn't put it down. You know, my production company is called Nine Stories Productions, which is an homage to J.D. Salinger's book of short stories. After The Catcher in the Rye I read everything he wrote. And now I'm back on another kick, reading them all again.

CC: Are you finding different lessons in them now than you did when you were younger?

JG: I think now I have an appreciation of the specific more than the broad--the ideas, the sort of Buddhism that pervades all of Salinger's work.

You know, I think it's genius that J.D. Salinger doesn't want anybody to make a movie of his book, because there's no way anyone can play it. it is what it is to everybody. I've met many people who actually dislike it. Especially some women I know.

CC: Really? Why? In protest of the--and here I will try to shield those who haven't had the good fortune to read it yet--various tools Holden uses in his night of self-discovery?

JG: I don't want to be gender-specific, and I hate separating male from female, but I do think that male angst, especially in an adolescent boy's life, is very specific. I think girls moving into womanhood go through it earlier and in a somewhat different way. So by the time they're the age where boys start going through it, they've sort of already gone through it, and some people just don't relate.

CC: That's interesting. I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who has a vehement dislike for the book. I know people who don't like it as much as I would have anticipated they would, but I've never had the benefit of having to defend why I like it. It's a special experience to read it when you are at the age Holden is in the book. I had to read it in high school, and it really compelled me and my friends to think about where we were in our lives.