David Fincher struggled with ‘scattered’ and ‘slacking’ Jake Gyllenhaal on Zodiac set

Actor and filmmaker famously clashed on set of 2007 film

David Fincher has spoken out on his struggles with Jake Gyllenhaal on the set of Zodiac, claiming that the actor was “scattered” and “slacking”.

The director and actor famously clashed while working on the 2007 film, with Gyllenhaal claiming that Fincher “paints with people” while working. “It’s tough to be a colour,” the actor added.

Fincher has now claimed that Gyllenhaal came to the set distracted, with his burgeoning fame and team of agents and publicists meaning work wasn’t his main priority.

“Jake was in the unenviable position of being very young and having a lot of people vie for his attention, while working for someone who does not allow you to take a day off,” Fincher explained to The New York Times. “I think Jake’s philosophy was informed by — look, he’d made a bunch of movies, even as a child, but I don’t think he’d ever been asked to concentrate on minutiae, and I think he was very distracted.”

Fincher said that Gyllenhaal was being told at the time that Jarhead, his 2005 war film, was going to be a major awards contender. As a result, the actor was making appearances at a variety of film festivals to promote it while Zodiac was in production.

“When he’d show up for work, he was very scattered,” Fincher said. “[He had] his managers and his silly agents who were all coming to his trailer at lunch to talk to him about the cover of GQ and this and that. He was being nibbled to death by ducks, and not particularly smart ducks. They got in his vision, and it was hard for him to hit the fastball.”

Gyllenhaal later apologised to Fincher for their conflicts on the Zodiac set, but the director said that he did not require such a response. He admitted, however, that he can be “confrontational if [he] sees someone slacking”.

David Fincher and Jake Gyllenhaal at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

On the set of his new film Mank, the famously exacting filmmaker required star Amanda Seyfried to shoot a particular scene “200 times”.

Fincher also recently claimed that the DC Comics blockbuster Joker was “a betrayal of the mentally ill”.