Jake Gyllenhaal

"I don’t know if you can say one of them but Adam’s Rib and Woman of the Year, like the Hepburn/Tracy movies. The two of them together will never, ever age. There are scenes in those movies together that could be when you’re watching them today, in this moment. I remember those movies and my mother would always love those movies, and I would watch those movies with her, particularly Woman of the Year. I remember feeling very specifically about that movie that I love so much, which is how Spencer Tracy cracks his eggs while he’s making an omelet. I will always crack my eggs like Spencer Tracy because of that movie. [laughs]"

"Goonies, yeah. I mean maybe Goonies is better than Jerry Maguire, though I do love Jerry Maguire. Goonies is just like… I have no words for how awesome Goonies is. I happen to be working with Josh Brolin on this Everest movie I’m about to do, and I still geek out. You know, I want him to wear a headband in the Everest movie because it’s such an amazing character choice. If I remember correctly I feel like he wore sweatpants over jeans in that movie? I’m pretty sure. I might be wrong about that. And that was a pretty dope character choice as well. Just incredible acting, and the scenes with Chunk still move me. And Butterfinger… Oh wait, no. Snickers? What is it, Snickers? My first crush was in Goonies too: Kerri Green. She was in Lucas. She was in Summer Rental. OK? Dude, she… Lucas is a very formidable… I had such a crush on her. Oh my god. If you see her in Lucas, you’d understand."

"The first movie that comes to my mind when somebody asks me about favorites is Searching for Bobby Fischer by Steve Zaillian. First of all, it’s a beautifully, beautifully shot and acted movie. I mean, the screenplay is brilliant, but more than anything, Conrad Hall shot the movie, and it’s one of the best performances I’ve seen by an actor of any age in a movie. The honesty and the presence of the lead kid in the movie is amazing. And every actor surrounding him is extraordinary, from Joan Allen, and Laurence Fishburne, Joe Mantegna, Ben Kingsley; Laura Linney plays like a one scene role in the movie. Like a virtually unknown at the time, Laura Linney. And just the story of father and son and the score is beautiful. It is inevitably one that I am always drawn to, and I think it’s filled with hope but also like a real darkness and the beauty of childhood."

"The next I would say is La Strada because, well, do I really have to say? I feel like it’s sort of self-explanatory. Like [laughs] Giulietta Masina, I mean every performance, but particularly the last scene in the movie, with Anthony Quinn and just being on the beach, and everything about that movie is beautiful. And there’s something always about his films that, knowing that audio was recorded post shooting the film — I’m pretty sure that’s true with that movie — just to know, in a way, if it is true, it’s just to know that there are two sort of performances happening simultaneously. You can see and hear that. And I love that idea and what skill and sort of the presence to this day that movie has. And it’s also personally really resonant because my father said after he saw that movie, it was what made him want to make movies, and when I finally saw it when I was a teenager, I understood why. So it inevitably has a resonance beyond the brilliance of the movie itself."

"Another is Jerry Maguire, because inevitably it’s just something I can never turn off whenever it’s on the television, and I think that has a power of its own. I also think that… What is it about that movie? I’m trying to think."