Jake Gyllenhaal opens up about the effect Heath Ledger’s death had on him

Jake Gyllenhaal has spoken at length about how the death of his Brokeback Mountain co-star Heath Ledger affected him.

“Personally, it affected me in ways I can’t necessarily put in words or even would want to talk about publicly,” he said. “In terms of professionally, I think I was at an age where mortality was not always clear to me.”

Speaking to People magazine, Gyllenhaal spoke about the personal troubles Ledger may have been experiencing before his death from a drug overdose in January 2008.

“I think you live in this bubble, too, of making films … There are real friends, and there is a real community. There is also that [new Macklemore song] where he says, ‘The curtain closes and nobody notices’… I think that’s true, and I think that’s okay,” the 34-year-old said.

“But I think at the time, I assumed everyone would notice – and they did with Heath dying, but I think it [gave me] the experience of, ‘This is fleeting.’ And none of the attention or synthesized love that comes from the success of a film really matters at all.

“What matters is the relationships you make when you make a film, and the people you learn from when you’re preparing for a film. That changed a lot for me.”

Speaking about the film, which has become a modern gay classic, he added: “We were super young. We had no idea what the movie was going to become.”

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