In praise of Jake Gyllenhaal

There are many things to like about Jake Gyllenhaal. Firstly, and probably most importantly, this:

But lest we forget his acting talents too (heaven forbid). He has delivered us one of the most iconic performances of the noughties before the noughties really began. In Donnie Darko, he brooded his little cottons off and showed that leading barely 20-something men could have something between the ears. In a thespian climate replete with such actorly luminaries as Seann William Scott, DJ Qualls and a pre-Buried Ryan Reynolds, it was nigh on miraculous.

It was a performance he replicated in a note-for-note fashion in the criminally underrated The Good Girl. Well, note-for-note if you replace the sci-fi element with chain-smoking and The Catcher in the Rye. What remained the same was his hotness.

In a similarly indie vein, he starred in an adaptation of Pullitzer Prize winning Proof, almost bursting out of his t-shirt. And cropped up in Nicole 'Please Give' Holofcener's Lovely and Amazing And, er, got stuck in a library in The Day After Tomorrow (I'd totally like to be rifling through his reference collection).

But surely his masterstroke was in Brokeback Mountain. His portrayal of gay cowboy Jack Twist was a masterstroke in hotness understatement.

He then had worked with a bunch of great directors and actors like David Fincher, Dustin Hoffman, Sam Mendes and …

Screw it, here's another picture:

Such a dreamboat.