Jake Gyllenhaal Says Jennifer Aniston Had To "Strategically" Place A Pillow Between Them While Shooting Sex Scenes (Boner.)
Toronto Sun — Jake Gyllenhaal has admitted to having a huge crush on Jennifer Aniston when they made 2002 film The Good Girl and really struggling to film their awkward love scenes together.
Gyllenhaal recalled working with the Friends star on the movie during an interview on The Howard Stern Show on Tuesday.
I…I'm ashamed, at how long it took me to remember what movie we're talking about here. I mean, a romcom from the early 2000s starring a peak-Aniston fresh off of Friends, and boy-wonder Jake Gyllenhaal? That is an ALL-TIME headline duo (still is, 20 years later — that's how hot these two are. Seriously if you star in the lead of a Hollywood romantic comedy and two decades later you're arguably hotter, that's how you know you are at like the pinnacle of human hotness).
Star power like that, I can't believe how much Googling I had to do before it clicked that we were talking about the quirky indie "The Good Girl", starring Aniston playing a depressed cashier searching for meaning and passion in a swirl of suburban malaise, and Gyllenhaal as a weirdo who has trouble growing up named "Holden" (wanna bet I can guess the 1 and only book the director ever read for Summer Reading and still claims is his #1 all-time favorite?)
You know what the problem is? It got good reviews. All the classics from that time period were frowned upon by the hoity-toity elite critic class.
And I don't mean like, it just didn't bomb. We're talking a solid 82% on Tomatoes.
That's like, "we call this movie a 'film'" territory.
That's, "the top critic review uses the word 'beguiling' and references 'Flaubert'" territory.
Anyway after refreshing my memory about this long-lost classic, I scoped out the rest of the old reviews: Scott Nash from "Three Movie Buffs" says the movie will be remembered for Aniston "wetting her acting chops."
Funny he should mention that, because according to Twitter headlines of the Howard Stern show today, Jake Gyllenhaal kind of proved Nash right —only it wasn't the chops that were wet, it was more "the dreams" and various pillows on set.
But the Nightcrawler actor was grateful to Jennifer for smoothing over a potentially embarrassing situation by strategically placing a pillow between them when they got “horizontal” during one scene.
“The pillow technique was used,” Jake joked. “That was just pre-emptive and used generally always when actually in a horizontal place in that movie…
“She was very kind to suggest it before we began. She was like, ‘I’m putting a pillow here.’”
"…..and, action!"
Jake:
Absolutely no shame in that. None. Jake was what…22, when filming that? Twenty-two years old! You get boners looking at blue jays on a birdfeeder at 22, let alone "lying horizontal" with Jennifer fucking Aniston.
Good for Gyllenhaal. In 2002 I had to put a pillow there just getting out of the carpool car at high school because of the bumps on the highway. Jake was bonered-up simulating sex with one of the hottest women alive.
PS,
Just watched "The Guilty" last night. One word for Jake's performance: "smoldering." Needed a pillow for that performance tbh.