Lady Gaga provides a refreshed review of her acting in House of Gucci in an interview with Jake Gyllenhaal
by Jaskiran Kaur | Fri, 28 Jan 2022 19:44:17 GMT
Image Source: Penske Media Corporation, Variety

Variety brought together Jake Gyllenhaal and Lady Gaga to talk about their films and acting in an Actors on Actors interview, and the two had a few things to say. 

The Guilty portrays Jake Gyllenhaal as a 911 dispatcher, a film directed by Antoine Fuqua, only in 11 days. The film borders on a heart-wrenching thrill, which even Lady Gaga could not help but comment about. While the very short shit time of The Guilty helped create a fast-paced flow of the film and added to the intensity, Gyllenhaal could have done a few things his own way. Yet, there is absolute brilliance in the form of the film. 

Lady Gaga also talked about how she herself felt starring as Patrizia Reggiani in House of Gucci by Ridley Scott. The film is also fast-paced and shows the Italian woman, from marrying the Gucci heir to murdering him. 

Notably, the two actors, Lady Gaga and Jake Gyllenhaal, do not run in similar circles and did not know each other before appearing for their Variety photo shoot, and yet, their Actors on Actors episode truly set off a beautiful rhythm between the two. In fact, as the two pose together, Gyllenhaal can not help but say out loud, “I’ve never held anyone like this,” as he takes Lady Gaga's waist in his arms. 

Beginning their interview, Jake Gyllenhaal lists his favorite aspect of House of Gucci. "One of the things that I loved about “House of Gucci” was that the film has such an operatic style, and it has so many characters surrounding your character," he says. "And opera is one of my favorite forms of expression to watch but to see a performance that stays true to reality was incredible."

Lady Gaga thanked Gyllenhaal for his appreciation and carried on to tell what made her character so "incredible," as The Guilty actor had stated. "The first thing I thought when I read the script was, “OK. They want some woman to use her body and her manipulation to get money from this incredibly wealthy man.” And the more that I dug through it, I realized that she was really in love with him. And women are complex creatures, and we’re complicated, and it’s never one single story," she revealed. "It’s many stories."

"I wanted to inject a reality into her that was multifaceted and fractured and broken," she said of her acting motive. "When I think about her as a character, I think of me taking little bits of glass from tons of different women and encapsulating them into one character that I still believe to be truly her, but I think insanity is subjective."

When Gyllenhaal specifically mentioned the scene where Patrizia asks Gucci his name, and he lets her know in the bar, Lady Gaga also detailed how she too thinks that was such a crucial scene for him to fall in love with her. "There’s a reason I am the way that I am in the scene," she said, before adding, "I do really study the hell out of a script, like a romance. And I break it down into what I believe it to be."

Not only was Gyllenhal a veteran of many films impressed by Lady Gaga's acting ( notably, she has acted in only two movies) but also shared that he admired her music. "I am amazed at how you are and have established yourself in music and songwriting in this extraordinary, mind-boggling way," he said. "And then you’ve somehow seamlessly been able to come into the world of storytelling in another form. And for me, when I think about acting in movies, I think of it as fits and starts. It’s not a song. You get little moments you have to pull off."

Here he asked how she got into acting and what she thinks of it. The singer answered, "I wanted to be an actress before I wanted to be a singer. And I studied for a really long time. I went to Lee Strasberg. I went to Circle in the Square. I studied the Stanislavski method. I worked with Susan Batson, who’s my acting teacher now. I would actually say playing a character for me is like living one long song."

Hence, it was very important for Lady Gaga to break the character of Patrizia earlier than she did after A Star is Born, so that she could stop living in the "long song." "For “A Star Is Born,” it was years for me" to come out of character, she revealed. "And for Patrizia, I dropped her faster because she was a killer, and there were some things about the transformation for me psychologically that were super challenging. When I watch the movie, it looks like I’m watching a montage of my life. I don’t feel like I’m watching a film."

Further revealing why Lady Gaga chose acting despite her massive success with songs, she continued, "Since I was a little girl, I was so mercilessly bullied, and I had a really strict upbringing. So acting for me was a way to totally escape who I was." She added, "And I think I’ve done it my whole career with taking on the artistic persona of whatever music I’m writing and living inside my art. And for films, it’s different, but it’s not."

The actress revealed all the methods she used to portray the part of Patrizia in House of Gucci. "I studied animals to play her," she began. "I studied a house cat for the beginning of the film. And then at the funeral, when she sees Al Pacino’s character, she suddenly turns into a fox because she’s hunting now. And I watched foxes hunt, and they’re really funny because they hunt mice in the snow, and they leap up, and they burrow."

"I actually did exercises in my hotel room where I would be the animal," she continued. "And then for that last scene, it was the panther. It was because the panther moves slowly, but then when it kills its prey, it is really violent and it’s really ugly, and then after, it cries."

Her acting techniques really resonated with the actor and the two carried on into their magical world of films. 

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