Getty Image
- Jake Gyllenhaal revealed that because of a giant crush he had on her at the time, doing sex scenes with Jennifer Aniston was “torture.”
- Gyllenhaal and Aniston worked together in the critically praised 2002 film The Good Girl alongside John C. Reilly, Zooey Deschanel, Tim Blake Nelson, and Mike White.
- More movie news here.
19 years ago, the drama-comedy The Good Girl starring Jennifer Aniston and Jake Gyllenhaal hit theaters. At that time, Aniston was married to Brad Pitt. Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, has never been married, but did start dating actress Kirsten Dunst the same year The Good Girl was released.
He also, according to an interview he did this week on The Howard Stern Show, had a very serious crush on Aniston while they were filming.
Which, Gyllenhaal says, made having love scenes with the famous Friends star more than a little uncomfortable for him.
“Oh yeah, it was torture, yes it was, yes” Gyllenhaal told Stern. “But it was also not torture. I mean, come on, it was like a mix of both.”
Related: Jake Gyllenhaal Joins Ashton Kutcher, Apparently Doesn’t Think Bathing Is All That Important
He continued, “Weirdly, love scenes are awkward, because there are maybe 30, 50 people watching it? Maybe if you have a closed set, it’s less. That doesn’t turn me on. So, most of the time it’s oddly mechanical. And also it’s a dance, you’re choreographing for a camera. You can get in it, but it’s like a fight scene, you gotta choreograph those scenes.”
Gyllenhaal, who was coming off his acclaimed performance in Donnie Darko at the time, also explained how he and Aniston, 12 years his senior, used something called the “pillow technique” for the love scenes.
“I do remember a pillow,” Gyllenhaal revealed. “Yeah, the pillow technique was used. That was just preemptive, and used, generally, always, when actually in a horizontal place in that movie. Everything else is whatever it was. I remember those two characters did a lot of making out on like, boxes in the back room.”
“Who taught you that?” Stern asked.
“I think that was actually a Jennifer suggestion,” he replied. “I think she was actually very kind to suggest it before we begin. She was like, ‘I’m putting a pillow here.’ That was it, that was all she said.”
This isn’t the first time Jake Gyllenhaal has reminisced about his crush on Jennifer Aniston.
Back in 2016, he told People, “I will say, I had a crush on her for years. And working with her was not easy . . . I was – um, yeah. That’s all I’m going to say. It was lovely. It wasn’t hard, that’s what I would say.”
Considering the fact that Aniston, 52, recently announced that she’s ready to date again, perhaps Jake… can… Oh, right, he’s been dating a French model, Jeanne Cadieu, since 2018, so he’s probably not really available right now.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B085HD9hUb6/