Jake Gyllenhaal has opened up about how being legally blind has helped him in his career.
Gyllenhaal, best known for his roles in Nightcrawler, Brokeback Mountain, and and Spider-Man: Far From Home, recently got candid about how his condition has proved to benefit his career, despite there still being a stigma around those living with disabilities.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the star referred to it as "advantageous."
“I like to think it’s advantageous,” he told the interviewer, while they referred to his 20/1250 vision.
"I’ve never known anything else. When I can’t see in the morning before I put on my glasses, it’s a place where I can be with myself," he continued.
The 43-year-old, who has earned a handful of awards for his movie roles, said he has used his blindness to aid him as an actor, especially during his 2015 stint in Southpaw where he played a champion boxer who vows to get his life back on track for his daughter after a tragic accident kills his wife.
In the scene where he's hearing the news about his character's partner's death, he decided to "remove his contacts to force himself to listen more closely," as per the outlet.
This isn't the first time Gyllenhaal opened up about his vision.
In 2017, he told The Telegraph that he became an "easy target" for bullies because of his intensive corrective lenses.
"I was always a sensitive kid," he said when talking about the teasing, which led to some fights and arguments when he was a child.
However, his condition didn't ever hold him back.
Even though he has multiple credits and accolades at this point in his career, he quickly realized that "the grind" wasn't the only thing that brought him pleasure in his life.
“I was thrown into a very adult world at a certain age," he told Esquire back in 2022.
He also added that “there should’ve been more room for me to play."
And that's exactly where his focus is now.
Gyllenhaal said he spent too long “driving hard, focusing intensely, grinding" so he's now learning to slow down and appreciate what's around him.
"It’s my family, my friends, and the people I love who take priority, and not, I hate to say it, the career. And maybe that’s me saying they didn’t always," the actor continued.
But what made him change his perspective? Age, to simply put it.
He was 41 at the time of the interview, and started "recognizing mortality in a different way."
"As you get older, you get to a place where you see yourself as you saw your parents when you were a child. And that’s a really beautiful perspective."
He also echoed a similar sentiment during his interview with The Hollywood Reporter when discussing his relationship with French model Jeanne Cadieu, whom he has been dating for six years now.
When asked about whether he would be tying the knot with his lover, he replied: “I’m supposed to tell The Hollywood Reporter that? I’m not going to give you timing!"
Though he did add: “I think we all get into that space of work, work, work, and for a long time my career took precedence, but I’m at a point in my life where I realize that family really is the only thing that matters to me.”