Jake Gyllenhaal is getting candid about the “awkward” predicament he found himself in while filming 2002’s The Good Girl with Jennifer Aniston.
For those who don’t know, Jake has previously admitted he had a crush on his co-star.
“She’s a rough one, you know, not likable. So hard to compliment,” he told People in 2016. “I will say, I had a crush on her for years. And working with her was not easy…I was–um, yeah. That’s all I’m going to say. It was lovely. It wasn’t hard, that’s what I would say.”
In a recent interview on The Howard Stern Show, the actor revealed what it was like to film intimate scenes with his celebrity crush for their movie.
“It was torture… but it was also not torture,” he told the host.
He also clued fans in on the movie magic that’s commonly used when filming those particular scenes. Because apparently, the whole process is quite “mechanical” despite the steamy outcome onscreen.
“Weirdly, love scenes are awkward because there are maybe 30, 50 people watching it,” Jake said. “Maybe if you have a closed set, it’s less. That doesn’t turn me on. Most of the time, it’s oddly mechanical, right?”
“You’re a professional,” Howard offered.
“Yes, and also it’s a dance,” the actor explained. “You’re choreographing for a camera… It’s one of those things — it’s like a fight scene, you’ve got to choreograph those things, and I always have tried.”
He revealed they used the “pillow technique.”
“I do remember a pillow,” Jake said. “Yeah, the pillow technique was used. That was just preemptive, and used — generally, always — when actually in a horizontal place in that movie. Everything else is whatever it was. I remember those two characters did a lot of making out on like, boxes in the back room.”
“I think that was actually a Jennifer suggestion,” he recalled. “I think she was actually very kind to suggest it before we began… She was like, ‘I’m putting a pillow here.’ That was it, that was all she said.”
Of course, this all happened almost two decades ago, and is now part of ancient history. Jake is currently very much loved-up with girlfriend Jeanne Cadeau, and told the host just that.
“I love her so much. She’s such a good person,” he said on the show.
The pair was first linked in 2018 and recently made their red-carpet debut at the premiere of his sister Maggie Gyllenhaal’s film The Lost Daughter at the New York Film Festival last week. And Jake also revealed he’s come to a point where he’s thinking of settling down and starting a family.
“That’s all I want is to be a good husband and a father…That really is what I want,” he explained. “And now that I have fulfilled a lot of things in my career that I feel comfortable with, I can safely say that. I don’t know if I could have said that before.”
