The “red flag” meme has been taking over the Internet in recent days, with countless social media accounts sharing statements that could hypothetically be a cause for concern in conversation. A handful of celebrities and notable profiles have been getting in on the trend — and it looks like actor Jake Gyllenhaal is one of them. On Thursday, Gyllenhaal took to Instagram to share photos from four of his previous projects — Okja, The Guilty, Bubble Boy, and Nightcrawler. Gyllenhaal captioned the post “This role would be perfect for Jake Gyllenhaal,” accompanied by four red flag emojis, seemingly hinting (understandably) that the projects were a little eccentric.
Gyllenhaal’s filmography has only grown more and more eclectic over the years, with projects ranging from The Guilty to Spider-Man: Far From Home. That Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster, which saw Gyllenhaal portraying Mysterio, proved to be an interesting experience for the actor.
“The first day of shooting I remember not being able to memorize my lines. I was the wooden board,” Gyllenhaal revealed during an appearance on Howard Stern. “And they were like, ‘Whoa.’ And I went up to Tom Holland and was like, ‘Dude, help me out.’ He’s like, ‘It’s all good, man. Just relax.’ It was like he was me in so many situations. And I finally did. I just put a lot of pressure on [myself] because I love that world. It’s not me coming in as an actor going ‘I’ve made 60 films, I know what I’m doing,’ it’s me coming in every time being like ‘I love Spider-Man, I love this world, I wanna kill it here.'”
“I had to walk up and be like, ‘Look man, I just came off Broadway doing a one-man show for an hour and a half onstage, so I got this,'” Gyllenhaal added. “‘Please, believe me.'”
With The Guilty, which sees Gyllenhall portraying a 911 call operator, the actor was challenged in another unexpected way.
“I think mostly the challenge is that I’m a pretty physical actor,” Gyllenhaal told ComicBook.com of the shooting experience. “So I like being in my body and moving around and I was just isolated in a chair, I couldn’t really move. But I also think that was a really interesting experience because it added to my attention and a desire and a frustration and there are a lot of feelings that came from that. I always knew it was going to be a movie about listening to other people, that’s what acting is. The first thing you learn, the first thing any acting teacher says is that acting’s all about listening. But, truthfully, it’s really the other actors in this movie that do the acting for me. We’re listening to them more than we’re listening to me and they’re all so incredible in it. So it’s really them.”