Okja's Jake Gyllenhaal interview: 'I’m interested in taking risks. This just happens to be one them'

The actor is such a fan of South Korean director Bong Joon-ho that he asked him for a part in his new movie 'Okja' and was given the role of zoologist Dr Johnny

Jake Gyllenhaal as the zoologist Dr Johnny in Bong Joon-ho's 'Okja'

In a reversal of normal practice, Jake Gyllenhaal asked South Korean director Bong Joon-ho if he could be in Okya, a fantasy morality tale about mass production in the food industry that centres around a child’s relationship with a genetically modified animal.

“I’ve known Bong for a long time,” Gyllenhaal tells The Independent at the Cannes film festival, where Okja made it’s world premiere. “We’ve talked on many occasions about doing a film together. When he showed me the first image of Okja, it was just in passing as we were having a conversation about something else. I asked if there was a role for me in it.”

On seeing a drawing of Okja, a cute, furry, super-sized pig, Gylenhaal had an inkling that the ensuing film would be something special. Especially as it was being made by the director of hit 2006 monster flick The Host, which also mixed fantasy themes with an environmental message.

Gyllenhaal (above) as Dr Johnny in 'Okja' asked for a role in Bong Joon-ho's film (Rex) (Rex Features)

Bong’s other credits include the blood-curdling serial-killer drama, Memories of Murder (2003) and Snowpiercer (2013), a post-apocalyptic satire set on a train in perpetual motion. The director has many fans, including Quentin Tarantino, who says Bong is in the same class as Steven Spielberg: “He has something that Spielberg has,” Tarantino says. “There is this level of entertainment and comedy in his films.”

Bong also has a fan in Tilda Swinton. She starred in Snowpiercer, as a political leader with many similarities to Margaret Thatcher. She had such a good time that she wanted not only to act with Bong again, but is also a co-producer on Okja.

Swinton plays Lucy Mirando, the CEO of the Mirando Corporation. The evil mind has come up with the idea of creating a cheap food source for the planet ­– a genetically modified pig-like animal that can grow to the size of an elephant. Example pigs are sent around the world, where at the end of a decade whoever has the biggest, fattest, tastiest-looking animal, will have their furry friend cloned for mass-consumption.

Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun) with her genetically modified pig-like animal, the title character in ‘Okja’

What Mirando never bargains for is that 10 years on, one of the animals, Okja, will be the pet and best friend of Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun), a sweet South Korean schoolgirl. Mirando’s attempt to retrieve Okja leads to a zany adventure that sees an animal rights group led by Paul Dano try to intervene to highlight the evil and cruel exploitation that underpins Mirando’s plan. On Mirando’s side is the character that Bong Joon-ho suggested Gyllenhaal play, Dr Johnny, a sad-sack zoologist who is the spokesperson for the company.

According to the film’s co-writer Jon Ronson, the BBC’s Johnny Morris – the popular host of the children’s television show Animal Magic – is the inspiration of Dr Johnny. I’m not sure Johnny Morris would be flattered given that Gyllenhaal plays Dr Johnny as “out there”. It’s an exaggerated performance, from the porn-star moustache to the long shorts, the squeaky voice and the gesticulations and buffoonery that seem straight out of Peter Sellers’s copybook.

Gyllenhaal says of his character: “Dr. Johnny is a very horrible performer, and I love that! There were a number of different zoologist characters that Bong showed and shared with me, sort of madcap kind of creatures. It’s interesting, because in order to speak, particularly with children, there is this strange affectation that people seem to take, we all seem to do it in one way or another, these bad performances that we give to children that just become magnified when we are on television.”

Heath Ledger and Gyllenhaal as two cowboys who fall in love in 2005’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’ (Rex) (Rex Features)

He and Bong kept on pushing the character until he arrived at “a certain kind of madness”.

It’s this madness that the 36-year-old actor says he craves whenever he looks for a role. Characters on edge such as the gaunt, determined novice video journalist in Nightcrawler, the buff muscular boxer in Southpaw, and more recently on stage in New York starring in the Broadway musical revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park, playing the fictional grandson of the French pointillist painter George Seurat.

“More and more, and sort of in different ways, what I’m interested in is taking risks,” says Gyllenhaal. “Things that are uncomfortable for other people and that are uncomfortable for me. This just happens to be one of those roles.”

Gyllenhaal and Jena Malone in 2001's 'Donnie Darko' (Rex) (Rex Features)

There is this Shakespearean quality of Dr. Johnny that means he’s a character who is never allowed to be himself or be happy in his own body. Director Bong says Dr Johnny’s role as the face of the Mirando Corporation and front man to their reality TV show is a poisoned chalice: “What is sad about Dr. Johnny is that as he’s in front of the camera or performing, he doesn’t have much alone time in the film. Someone is always watching him.”

It’s a feeling of being watched that Gyllenhaal knows all too well. The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Gyllenhaal’s first role came when he was just ten-years-old appearing in City Slickers (1991). His breakthrough came when he appeared with his older sister Maggie, in the cult hit Donnie Darko in 2001.

I saw him make his stage debut in London in Kenneth Lonergan’s award-winning This is our Youth in 2002. Gyllenhaal won the “Outstanding Newcomer” at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for his turn as gauche youth, Warren.

His arrival as a top movie draw came with Brokeback Mountain (2005), in which he and Heath Ledger played cowboys in love with each other.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Chloe Sevigny in David Fincher's 2007 film 'Zodiac' (Rex) (Rex Features)

Looking at the list of films of which he’s starred, it’s no surprise that Okja would appeal. Gyllenhaal has a penchant for political and challenging roles, from Sam Mendes’s adaptation of anti-war drama Jarhead, to David Fincher’s Zodiac, about the manhunt for the Zodiac serial killer, and he appeared in two Denis Villeneuve films within 12 months, Prisoners, and the superb doppelganger thriller Enemy.

He says of growing up under the spotlight is hard when “you are an artist trying to establish your identity while people are watching. Some people grow up quicker than others. But when you grow up, you decide there is only so much time so you might as well do what you love and I still struggle with that, not as much as I used to.”

He adds: “I think Tilda would say that she doesn’t worry about what anyone thinks and I would generally say that too when I’m performing, but I would say that is not entirely true in terms of me. I do care about story and about wanting people to enjoy what I’m doing and that really matters to me.”

'Okja' is on Netflix and on limited release in cinemas from 28 June