Jake Gyllenhaal was flattered that Christopher Nolan called him when he missed out on the Batman role

Ditto for Baz Lurhmann and Moulin Rouge! Thanks to these filmmakers, he did not get discouraged and continued to audition for leading roles.

In full promotion of the new Road Houseaction film by Doug Liman visible on Prime Video, Jake Gyllenhaal confirmed that he had missed the role of Bruce Wayne in the trilogy Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan. If he has since played a super villain at the competition, Marvel, in Spider-Man: Far From Home (to be seen again this Sunday on television), the actor admits that he would like to play DC's flagship superhero in the future.

“Of course I would accept, he replied to Screen Rant. It would be an honor. These characters are classics.”

Two decades after this “failure”, the 43-year-old actor explains why he didn't give up. Some comic book fans would also see him perfectly as Bruce Wayne, older than the current incarnation of Robert Pattinson. Why in in The Brave in the Bold, which should be developed within the Warner Bros. DCU. shortly ?

In the mid-2000s, Jake was in any case one of the actors in the running to play Bruce Wayne, alongside Cillian Murphy, for example. The actor of Donnie Darko was even the favorite of the screenwriter, David S. Goyer. He didn't get the role, but he doesn't have bad memories of the casting process, quite the contrary. Not to mention that one of his best friends, Heath Ledger, with whom he shared the poster for Brokeback Mountain in 2005, was chosen to play the Joker in the following film…

Invited to the Howard Stern Show, Jake details that he was flattered that Chris Nolan called him in person at the time to tell him that he had missed the role, won by Christian Bale. A few years earlier, Baz Luhrmann had done the same to warn him that he had chosen Ewan McGregor for his Red Mill !and this had reassured Jake, pushing him to persevere and go for more auditions.

oulin Rouge: Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal almost had the main role!

After detailing that he was far enough away to pass a screen test of Batman Begins in costume, he specifies:

“For Red Mill !, in the end it was just Heath, Ewan and me left. I had gone this far! It was the first time that I found myself in competition with Heath, he had just auditioned in the room opposite, and they moved him to another room so that I could come in… That's how it was happens. Of course, I was disappointed when I ultimately didn't get the role. And I think he does too, for that matter. But in the end, we learn to move forward, to say to ourselves: 'There will be another role.', 'Let's have another audition.' We must maintain this positive attitude.

As for Chris and Baz, these two directors called me personally to tell me that I wouldn't get the role. They explained to me why. And when you get there, you've gained some legitimacy, you know you can potentially make it happen. It's not like they just tell you: 'Thank you so much.'they specified: 'There is this aspect of your personality that I would have liked for this role, but I chose this other person because this character trait fit better…' It is not necessarily in opposition to you . Sometimes, it's simply linked to the color of hair or eyes, to the height of an actor, whatever!

There are all kinds of factors that come into play in these cases. Unexplainable things, and if you dwell on them for too long, it's not healthy. I said to myself: 'Look how far you've come! Go ahead, keep going.' That's how I felt the day Christopher Nolan called me. I said to myself : 'I've just been personally notified by the director, it's cool. I've gone pretty far. I went from: 'They're not sure about me' has 'He calls me to tell me what he would have thought of me in this film.' So I must continue. I must persevere.'“

A few years ago, Jake Gyllenhaal shared another audition memory, completely failed this time: he tried his luck for the role of Frodo in the trilogy of Lord of the Rings by Peter Jackson, but everything had gone wrong.

Jake Gyllenhaal talks about his failed audition for Lord of the Rings