Early career Jake Gyllenhaal studied for a time at Columbia University, left to attend the meeting because he decided to concentrate on acting. Picture of Low Memorial Library, the school library. During his childhood, Gyllenhaal had regular exposure to movies, because his family was closely linked to industry. At eleven years old made his debut as an actor playing the son of Billy Crystal in the 1991 comedy film City Slickers. His parents did not allow him to appear in the 1992 film The Mighty Ducks because the required production Jake left his home for two months. In the coming years, his parents allowed him to participate in casting tests for different roles, but regularly his son refused to accept the role if he is elected. Conversely, had the opportunity to appear repeatedly in some of the films of his father.Appeared in the 1993 film A Dangerous Woman (along with his sister Maggie), in “Bop Gun”, an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, in 1994, and in the 1998 comedy Homegrown. Along with Maggie and her mother Gyllenhaall appeared in two episodes of Molto Mario, an Italian cooking show Food Network. Before his senior year in high school, the only film not directed by his father in which Gyllenhaal was given for permission to act in the film was 1993 Josh and SAM, a little-known children’s adventure. He graduated from the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles in 1998 and then attended Columbia University, where his sister was studying the upper level and of which his mother had graduated, to study Eastern religions and philosophy.He left the university two years later to concentrate on acting, although he has expressed its intention to complete his degree. The Gyllenhaal’s first starring role came in October Sky, an adaptation of Homer Hickam autobiography Rocket Boys, directed by Joe Johnston, in which she played a young man from West Virginia trying to win a science scholarship to avoid becoming a coal miner. The film grossed 32 million and was described in the Sacramento News and Review as the “interpretation revelation” of Gyllenhaal.