According to People, Jake Gyllenhaal was hospitalized for punching a mirror on set of Nightcrawler. He smashed the mirror so hard that his hand needed stitches. Yikes — but before I get into that, here's a quick story first: So, during the filming of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, there's a scene where Leonardo DiCaprio slams his hand on a table and unintentionally strikes a piece of broken glass. His hand is badly cut, and blood starts pouring out of the wound — real blood. DiCaprio, however, doesn't break character, and uses his now very real (and probably painful) wound to his benefit, and ends up giving a performance so good that it's a crime he wasn't awarded an Oscar that year. At the very least, the story made the rounds on blogs everywhere.
Now, I'm not saying that Jake Gyllenhaal was trying to pull a Leonardo DiCaprio with what happened on the set of his new film Nightcrawler...but you gotta admit, the situations are pretty similar. Except, y'know, Gyllenhaal kinda failed.
Anyway: According to People, a source on the set reports that "Jake flipped out" during a scene, and ended up injuring himself. "His character was looking into a mirror during the scene and punched the mirror in anger and broke it, cutting himself so bad he had to be taken to a hospital," they explained. Nightcrawler is, as previously reported, the film in which Gyllenhaal portrays a crime-scene reporter and had to lose 20 pounds for.
"The scene was emotionally charged and his character was talking into a mirror and he got so into it, he banged his hands against the mirror and it broke and cut him," the source continued. "It was all the scene and not because he was mad about anything else." Don't try to pull a Leo unless you are Leo!
Gyllenhaal reportedly received stitches for his wound before returning to set later that day. Gonna guess they're not planning on using that take in the film.
