Jake Gyllenhaal tells Steve Pratt that he wants to be like megastar Tom Hanks and be always watchable and have something to say. Not bad for a 23-year-old action man.

THE first question you want to ask young American actor Jake Gyllenhaal is "what's a serious actor like you doing in a blockbuster like this?". The star of cult hit Donnie Darko doesn't seem the likeliest of people to battle end-of-the-world special effects as the weather takes a turn for the worse in the summer blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow.

He's the son stranded in New York, frozen over thanks to a new Ice Age, as climatologist dad Dennis Quaid treks through the snow to rescue him.

Gyllenhaal - pronounced Jill-en-hall - turns out to be a fan of big movies and jumped at the chance to be in the mother of all disaster films after a string of independent movies and an award-winning London stage appearance in This Is Our Youth.

And he doesn't mind talking about it because he thinks The Day After Tomorrow is a good movie "which is so fortunate when you have no control over whether a movie is good or not".

That's not totally true as he admits later in the conversation that he "fought with them forever", a reference to discussions with director Roland Emmerich and producer Mark Gordon about the dialogue. "There were times I told them I didn't like the dialogue and that my character would never say this. Then they'd change it, or they wouldn't. It was a constant process," he says.

What's he takes pride in is the fact that the film draws attention to environmental issues. "You can have a good performance in something but if the movie doesn't work, nobody really cares. It's great that this movie works and it says something subversive, and that people who have the power like Roland and Mark have used it in a more interesting and courageous way than film-makers who make movies this big. So it's cool."

The 23-year-old actor might also be classed cool, thanks to his performance as Donnie Darko - a disturbed youth visited by a giant rabbit predicting the end of the world. The film, which features a plane crash, had the misfortune to open a few weeks after September 11 and soon disappeared from American cinemas.

Over here, the film has become something of a cult hit. Acknowledging that "the Brits made everyone aware", he says quite simply: "Thank God for Jesus Christ". This is because Newmarket, who distributed Donnie Darko, also released Mel Gibson's money-spinner The Passion Of The Christ - "so they have the money to recharge the campaign for Donnie Darko". The film is being re-released over there (and here too) in a director's cut edition.

"I love the movie and am so proud of it," says Gyllenhaal. He doesn't see his career as balancing blockbusters with independent movies, but considers it as a whole. "If I love the story and what it's saying, I want to do it even if it means being in Montreal for seven months in the dead of winter. Whether it's made for $125 million or $1.25 million doesn't matter. Moving the decimal point doesn't matter for me," he says.

"When you walked on set for The Day After Tomorrow there were 700 extras, a tank full of water and you had to run up and down stairs 100 times and that was the end of your day, instead of breaking down and talking to a rabbit. My role is the same regardless of the size of my trailer or whatever.

"I'm still trying to search for the right thing. I still cared and my heart was still in it."

He's conscious career-wise of a desire that people know him and want to see a movie he's in because they know his films have something meaningful to say. He points to Tom Hanks as an example of how he'd like it to work. "No matter what you think of the movies he's in, you want to see them. You know he'll always have something to say. I want to be like him. I really have to think very clearly about what I actually believe in - which, being 23 years old, is hard to figure out."

He did his fair share of the action in The Day After Tomorrow, notably in a sequence in which he is pursued by wild wolves on a deserted ship. He tells of the moment he had to fall from the side of the ship and grab on to the side with one hand. He did that stunt himself, but unfortunately the scene didn't make the finished film. There was a time last year when it looked like he might be pulling on Spiderman's suit for the sequel to the blockbuster hit because Tobey Maguire, who starred in the first film, had a back injury. That didn't happen, although Gyllenhaal does have a link with the webbed wonder - his real life girlfriend is Kirsten Dunst, who plays Spiderman's on-screen love interest.

* The Day After Tomorrow (12A) is showing in cinemas now.

Published: 03/06/2004