Jake Gyllenhaal found he lost “all fun and imagination” when he underwent major transformations for acting roles.

Over the course of his career, the Donnie Darko star has bulked up to play a U.S. Marine in Jarhead and to portray a professional boxer in Southpaw.

And while Jake has packed on the muscle for his part as UFC fighter Elwood Dalton in Doug Liman’s upcoming Road House, he no longer believes that he has to go to extremes for a project to be successful.

“I love pushing myself to lengths. That idea of control, which I completely empathise with, I think it ended up making the performances I was doing less interesting. Kinda grinding out the same place. And then, it just dawned on me that there were other things besides (this),” he said during an appearance on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast. “There was a point where I realised I lost all fun and imagination. I think there’s a thing perpetuated with actors, which I think I agree with less now, that is you have to do all this to yourself to turn something over. Now, I’m at a place where I realise the only thing I want is to be vulnerable. I struggle with that a lot. I know that when I have that, with the person I’m working with or the director, I am my best self.”

Jake went on to note that taking on physical challenges for onscreen projects has benefitted him a lot in the past, but he now realises such behaviour no longer serves him in the same way.

“It’s also interesting too that the physical stuff in my life is the stuff that has pushed me through really hard times. But then now I realise, more and more, that those lessons I had learned and used have kind of ground out,” the star added.

Road House, a reimagining of the 1989 classic film of the same name, does not yet have a release date.

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