Penthouse spoke to Jake Gyllenhaal about his gripping new role, RESISTING convention, and testing HIS limits

As handsome as he is talented, Jake Gyllenhaal has distinguished himself as an actor capable of great pathos, intensity, and sensitivity. In films ranging from “Brokeback Mountain” to “Zodiac” to “Nightcrawler,” Gyllenhaal is a consistently riveting performer. Those are the qualities he brings to his new film, “Demolition,” directed by French-Canadian filmmaker Jean-Marc Valléein (“Dallas Buyers Club”), in which he plays a New York City investment banker struggling with grief following the death of his wife in an auto accident.

“He’s a guy who’s lived his life according to convention, according to what society says you should do,” Gyllenhaal says. “He got married at an age when society suggests you should get married and he’s found a good job and become successful according to what society defines as success. But when he faces the tragedy of his wife’s death, he doesn’t know who he is or how he should feel.”

Demolition kicks off when Gyllenhaal’s character, Davis, writes a letter to the vending machine company after becoming frustrated by a malfunctioning candy dispenser at the hospital where his wife dies. His complaints land at the desk of the company’s customer services rep, Karen (Naomi Watts), and thus begins an odd relationship between two lost souls.

Gyllenhaal, 35, lives in New York where he remains close to his sister, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. He was rumored to have been dating Rachel McAdams last year. He recently appeared in “Everest” and will be seen later this year co-starring with Amy Adams in “Nocturnal Animals,” directed by fashion designer turned filmmaker Tom Ford (“A Single Man”).

Jake, this is a very different kind of story about grief and loss, isn’t it?

I saw it from the perspective of how we can walk around in life and not understand how we feel or who we really are. After my character loses his wife, he feels that he’s been living a lie and that everything he thought was true about his world was false. He realizes that his choices were based on convention rather than his own instincts or dreams.

Is there a lesson to be learned from getting too comfortable or not being critical enough in how we examine the way we go through life?

One of the things you can take away from this story is how every time you think you’re going down a conventional route, something comes along and sideswipes you, like the accident that takes the life of his wife. That’s the kind of event that forces you out of your patterns and you begin thinking much more critically about your world and what you’re doing in it. He doesn’t want society telling him how he should feel.

“I’ve never wanted to do things that were easy or too comfortable”

Is fighting convention something you’ve tried to do during your life and career?

I think we’re all always fighting convention in a way or we’re not and then we succumb to that. Ultimately all that matters is what you as an individual believe in regardless of what other people tell you you should believe. I guess in a way that’s something I’m trying to do as an artist but all human beings should be doing that because if we did we’d have a totally different world.

There are some striking scenes in the film, one of which has your character taking a sledgehammer to the house…

That’s how the film also upsets your expectations and goes against conventional ways of storytelling. When Chris Cooper’s character tells mine to “take things apart,” most people would naturally assume that’s a metaphor. But in this case it involves actually destroying a house. (Davis) needs to destroy his physical surroundings because that’s his only way of coping because he’s not able to express or release his emotions.

It’s only after he meets Karen that he’s able to start understanding himself and what is really going on inside himself. That’s what was fascinating and also a bit disturbing for me as an actor. I wasn’t able to express grief the way you normally would show it.

How did you approach translating your character’s very different kind of response to dealing with his wife’s death and trying to recover from that?

Normally I prepare very intensively before a movie and I spend several months trying to figure out my character, their job, and the world they inhabit. You try to absorb all of that so that your behavior and your responses as your character become very natural and become a part of you.

I didn’t do that for this movie. Jean-Marc (Vallée) didn’t want me to prepare or rehearse at all. He wanted to keep me off balance and not be able to rely on my usual ways of approaching my performance. Because my character isn’t following a traditional pattern of grieving, if there is such a thing, Jean-Marc wanted me to feel as unsettled as possible.

Your character’s relationship with Naomi Watts’s character begins after writing complaint letters about a malfunctioning vending machine. Have you ever written such letters yourself?

When I was a little child I was in school and we were supposed to learn to write letters, complaint letters. So I decided to write to Kentucky Fried Chicken to tell them I was upset that they had decided to discontinue Chicken Littles, which were a particular type of mini-hamburger with fried chicken.

It was really upsetting to me at the time and I felt that they should bring them back. And I think indirectly I helped them do that! (Laughs)

(Writing complaint letters) is empowering and I encourage everyone to really express themselves and bring back whatever it is that they think has been taken away in their lives. In my case, it was really important to get Kentucky Fried chicken to bring back Chicken Littles—seriously!(Chicken Littles ultimately returned to the menu of KFC four years ago–ED)

There’s another wonderful moment in the film where your character is dancing on a train platform, in an elevator, and then in the streets?

I was always looking on the schedule as to when the dancing was going to be. And I was terrified, you know. (Jean-Marc) was pushing me back in a lot of ways…and then he would open the door and he would let me go!

I didn’t know how much I wanted to express because he had pushed so much down that, when he allowed it, it was like: “Here’s your little ticket to ride!”

You have always been willing to push yourself to the limit in films like “Nightcrawler,” “Southpaw,” and now in “Everest.” Is that something that you feel driven to do?

I’ve always been anxious to challenge myself as much as possible. I’ve never wanted to do things that were easy or too comfortable. My parents were constantly trying to encourage me to push the envelope and test my limits as much as possible.

They feel that that’s the way you grow as an individual because you’re forcing yourself to exit your comfort zone. For me, life is all about discovery and risk and exploring new aspects of yourself as well as the world in general.

Does that sometimes mean you take things too far?

(Smiles) I’m hardest on myself. I’m very passionate about what I do and I can’t take the easy way out. I just can’t… Acting offers you an opportunity to find catharsis through the way you express the emotions of your characters and by behaving in ways that you wouldn’t dare to in your own life.

Do you have a natural predilection towards characters that are either extreme or as emotionally complex or conflicted as possible?

I like characters who are as messy and complicated because that’s who we are as humans. It’s much more interesting for me to explore those states of being than playing characters who don’t find themselves under stress or need to face up to serious problems. We’re all struggling in our own particular ways and we all live in different states of joy, hope, fear, and anxiety. That’s what makes us interesting and those are the kinds of characters I enjoy portraying.

PHOTOS: Getty Images/ Neilson Barnard; Cindy Ord