The mysterious actor rumored to be interviewing Lady Gaga, 35 for Variety’s annual ‘Actors on Actors’ issues has been revealed: Academy-Award nominee Jake Gyllenhaal, 41! The duo looked the part of Hollywood royalty as this year’s cover stars, where they discussed life, work, art, and even had a little fun. “The two of us are a nightmare,” Gaga reportedly joked on the set of the shoot.
Gaga, who has previously raised eyebrows for her outlandish descriptions of preparing for and filming House of Gucci, dived further into her journey becoming Patrizia Reggiani in the acclaimed film. Gaga, who told Jake she wanted to be an actress long before she wanted to be a singer, said she wanted to give Patrizia a “multifaceted and fractured and broken” reality. She said she studied many different animals to embody the character, from house cats to foxes to panthers. “It’s super immersive,” she said of the process.
Gaga went on to ask Jake about his recent thriller The Guilty, which she said left her heart “pounding out of my chest.” In the Netflix film, Jake plays a 911 dispatcher put to the ultimate test when he fields a phone call from a kidnapped woman. Jake told Gaga that he thrived under the pressure of making the entire film over 11 days. “I love doing the performance with the reading where you don’t know everything” Jake said. “All these instincts come up. You have to use what you got.” For Jake, expressing himself through acting has been “life-saving.”
Gaga’s performance as Patrizia has been garnering massive praise, most recently earning her nominations for a Golden Globe and a SAG Award. Although the performance has been lauded, Gaga admitted that she still wonders about the reviews from one very specific critic: Patrizia Reggiani herself. “I don’t know what she thinks about it,” Gaga shared, “but everyone around me said: ‘I think this might be painful [for her].'”
Jake, on the other hand, has found himself in the news recently for a redder, woolier reason: the infamous scarf ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift describes leaving with Jake in breakup anthem “All Too Well.” The track, which received a new 10-minute edition and short film for Taylor’s November re-release of Red, had Swifties opening old wounds and calling out Jake for his treatment towards the singer, 32.
Though Jake has stayed quiet on the matter, he appeared in a photo shoot for W Magazine’s “Best Performances Portfolio” wearing red heart sunglasses and a red button-down, a suspicious nod to Taylor’s “22” music video. A few weeks later, Gaga too posed in red for W, in a shocking photoshoot where she cut her own face with scissors. Perhaps the two really are a nightmare together; if anything, they’re a beautiful one!