I’m sorry I didn’t get to this lovely Jake Gyllenhaal video before (below), because it is adorable. It’s Jake, promoting The Prince of Persia in Russia, and having a lot of fun of with Russian chicas. This totally looks like blackmarket spy footage, which makes me think that at least one of the girls Jake was partying with was a hooker, but nothing dirty happens. The boy just loves to dance and sing along to Marvin Gaye. Ain’t nothing wrong with that:

Adorable, right? But isn’t he dating Isabel Lucas? Maybe that was just a fling, because he’s not really acting like a dude with a girlfriend. Then again, he’s not making out with any of these girls… but he is flirting his ass off. I didn’t know he had it in him.

Meanwhile, Jake gave an extensive interview to the Philippines’ newspaper The Inquirer, and there are some really great quotes from the piece. The full article is here, and here are some highlights:

On interviews: “I love my work and care about it. But I’m beginning to have a great sense of humor about it because I just don’t feel like there’s any need to take it all that seriously.”

On shaping up for the role: “It was a really long, arduous process. It was total devotion. It was so hard to get paid to exercise. There’s nothing harder. First, I grew the hair which was, again, really hard. It tried my patience. It’s painful to grow out your hair. It was really about two simple things: Shampooing and then conditioning. Not the two-in-one kind. You start with the shampoo which really works out the biceps. If you rub vigorously, then the triceps are worked out with conditioning. A lot more bathing involved, actually. Three to four hours in the shower of vigorously rubbing all over defines the abs and pectoral muscles. Eventually, you just become the Prince of Persia. Also, drinking bath water is always a nice way of keeping yourself hydrated while you’re bathing and training to get the Prince of Persia physique.”

On the accent: “From the very beginning, Mike Newell would say to me, ‘You know my dear boy, you should just speak in the accent. Do not be afraid. Just talk to all the actors and enjoy yourself.’ I was like, ‘Oh Jesus.’ I was so nervous. I was working on the accent for about three months with a dialect coach because I knew how much scrutiny I would get. I had been watching ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ over and over again. And by the way, Bridget Jones was a main influence in my training regimen. I was going after that physique. My accent was really a mixture of Gwyneth Paltrow in ‘Sliding Doors’ and Renee Zellweger in ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary.’ Gwyneth in ‘Sliding’…influenced the hair, too.”

Filming in the sand: “It’s so strange. Like I read the script and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it.’ And then I show up in the desert and I am like, ‘How the hell did I not know that we were shooting in the desert for four months?’ I’m pretty familiar with sand – it’s in my DNA now. If I have children one day, they will be born made of sand… Sand gets in everywhere, like my mother used to say. I had a lot of sand in my schlitz.”

Filming in Morocco: “People talk about how hot it is in the desert. We shot in the desert in Morocco which is beautiful. If the audience responded to this movie and we have to do another one, I would gladly do it. I just thought this seems like great fun. It was really that simple.” Then he quipped, “You’re like, ‘Aha, I bet. You liar.’ But no.”

[From The Inquirer]

I totally have doubts whether The Prince of Persia will end up being a hit movie. Can Jake Gyllenhaal convincingly pull off the cartoon-ish action hero? Eh. He seems more suited for the anti-hero, the sympathetic dramatic lead, or even a comedic lead. We’ll see how audiences respond to Jake in a skirt-and-sandals, sand-filled action film.