In his new movie, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Jake Gyllenhaal is a fearless hero, Prince Dastan. The actor bulked up and mastered sword fighting.
And of all the things Gyllenhaal mastered, his fear of ostriches was not one of them, reports People.com.
“They would say, ‘Don’t make any noise around the ostriches. They’ll tear out your eyes and rip out your heart.’ So, I was naturally terrified,” Gyllenhaal said. “They look like they’re innocent, but they’re really not.”
Gemma Arterton, Gyllenhaal’s co-star, can confirm the actor’s fear of the flightless bird.
“He was really scared,” Arterton said. “He ran away, and the look on his face – it’s not acting. It’s real.”
Arterton also seems to have had better luck on set with animals, than Gyllenhaal.
“I did a horse-riding stunt, which took me two weeks to rehearse,” Arterton said. “I had to jump onto a horse while it was galloping towards me. It was pretty scary, and I’m proud of myself for doing it, and I made sure that I looked over my shoulder so that everyone knew it was me and not a stunt double.”
We already knew that Jake Gyllenhaal is playing the lead role of the acclaimed video game franchise-turned-movie Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. What we didn’t know is that the Brokeback Mountain actor was actually a legitimate fan of the Prince of Persia series as a child.
“I played their original side-scrolling version of the game when I was a kid,” said the 29-year-old actor laughing, in an interview with MTV News.
Directed by Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), the movie tells the story about the origins of young Persian Prince Dastan, and his quest to rescue the Sands of Time, a gift from the gods that controls time, from an evil nobleman.
