8/8/2023 0 Comments Time out sports bar on fuqua![]() ![]() “I demand it.” As we’re idling, Chris, our Monticello tour guide, whose literal job title is director of fun, walks up to our car-a BMW M5-and checks the tire temperature. “You have to put on your seat belt,” he says. This time, Gyllenhaal’s in the driver’s seat. ![]() We head to the pit of the main track and climb into a race car. The guy who quotes, in a conversation about snap bracelets, The Little Mermaid. It’s hard to reconcile all that with the generous, self-effacing, funny guy before me. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play ![]() Who fiercely protects his personal life who once answered a question about what he’d had for breakfast with “There are some things I keep to myself.” Here’s a man who has earned fame, and also a measure of power, while avoiding-until very recently-the worst trappings of celebrity. You’d have trouble finding a story about him that doesn’t mention his total devotion to the craft, or the sadness lurking behind those puppy-dog eyes. ![]() His reputation has been forged from such portrayals he’s received nominations for both an Oscar and a Tony. At his best, he is one of the finest actors we’ve got-capable of plumbing the depths of masculine feeling that most of us spend our lives trying to bury. For two decades, in more than thirty movies, he’s played all manner of complicated men: sleazeballs, bruisers, obsessives, ex-cons, bad cops, good cops, the schizoaffective, and five wid-owers. This is not the Jake Gyllenhaal I expected. “But don’t watch them all.” He laughs-staccato, open-mouthed, infectious. “Thank you, man.” He glances up from his shoes. “Oh, thanks,” Gyllenhaal says, bowing his head. “I just watched The Guilty,” says Ionel, the club’s general manager. “Think it’s a bad sign that it took me fifteen minutes to turn off the waterspout?” he asks the small crew who’ve come in for the day. Once we arrive, Gyllenhaal ducks into the restroom in the collector-car gallery and returns gushing about the sink fixtures. But now, when he smiles, wrinkles run radially toward their edges. His eyes, the clear blue of a butane flame, are still equine in their expressiveness. His hair, long and brown and fully accounted for, is studded with gray. His age shows in only the minutest of ways. He’s a youthful forty-one, slim and fit and energetic. Jacket and trousers by Prada vintage T-shirt available at the Society Archive Santos watch by Cartier. “Fuck it.” Near the foothills of the Catskills, he reaches toward me with an offering in the palm of his hand: “Tic Tac?” And what’s the deal with the durable literary influence of the Russians? “Let’s have fun,” he says as we leave the highway for the county roads. Can he join? We’re reading Gary Shteyngart’s new novel? He loves Gary! “We’re very good friends.” Gary loves Chekhov. He asks about my job, my wife, our book club. On Thanksgiving, he spatchcocked his first turkey-“a very intense spatchcocking.” He’s working his way through a list of recipes he always figured would be difficult, but none so far have been the catastrophe he’d presumed. “I’ve got a bag of nuts, if you want to share them later.” He’s really into food. He rifles through his backpack and pulls out an energy bar. As we climb the New Jersey Palisades, and the city passes from view, his shoulders seem to slacken under his comically puffy coat. His incoming calls go ignored, his texts unread. This day is work, too, of course, but at least it will be offset by adrenaline-inducing fun. He’s been looking forward to leaving town, away from the endless obligations and the hounding tabloids. The traffic is bad, but he doesn’t complain. “I want to be a good copilot here,” he says as we creep toward the Lincoln Tunnel. He volunteers to take the wheel-“I’m a good driver, you’ll see!”-then to navigate, and he sounds a little aggrieved when he’s upstaged by Waze. We set out for Monticello Motor Club, a members-only racetrack in the southern Catskill Mountains, two hours north, in my beat-up Jeep. I pick up Jake Gyllenhaal in Lower Manhattan, not out side his building, a redbrick factory converted into luxury condos designed for discretion, but instead at a hotel taxi stand three blocks south. Jumpsuit by Carhartt shirt by Dolce & Gabbana Santos watch by Cartier bracelet throughout, Gyllenhaal’s own. ![]()
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