Jake Gyllenhaal Biography
Actor. Born Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal on December 19, 1980, in Los Angeles, California. The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and producer/screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, Jake and his sister, Maggie, have been acting since childhood. He graduated from Los Angeles' Harvard-Westlake High School and studied for a year at Columbia University in New York before dropping out to pursue acting.

On making the bridge from child to adult actor, Gyllenhaal purposefully passed over teen fare for such films as 1999's October Sky and Drew Barrymore's Donnie Darko, for which he earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination. The roles that followed echoed in complexity: Jennifer Aniston's troubled love interest in 2002's The Good Girl, 2002's Lovely & Amazing and 2005's Brokeback Mountain, a love story of two cowboys caught in a homosexual liaison that earned him a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination in addition to winning him the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
In spring 2002, Gyllenhaal starred on the London stage in Kenneth Lonergan's revival of This Is Our Youth. The actor received an Evening Standard Theater Award for his portrayal.

Gyllenhaal dated actress Kirsten Dunst from 2002 to 2004. He's been linked to Reese Witherspoon since 2007.

Jake Gyllenhaal