Jake Gyllenhaal is Stronger and aiming for an Oscar

SKYNEWS

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Jake Gyllenhaal is again aiming for an Oscar, this time by playing a Boston bombing survivor in Stronger.

Since Daniel Day-Lewis announced he was quitting the big screen, a power vacuum has been created, leaving many wondering who could step up as the best actor working in Hollywood today. For me, the answer is as simple as it is difficult to spell.

Since his (proper) debut in October Sky, he has managed to stand out as the most versatile, dedicated, prolific, courageous and straight-out brilliant actor of his generation. So where's the recognition?

The Academy is known for its grudges, blacklisting great actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, Gary Oldman, Amy Adams - the list goes on and on.

But DiCaprio has since been vindicated, and all the others have had enough nominations to attribute their Oscar snubs to better competition.

Gyllenhaal, however, was nominated only once in nearly 40 films, for best supporting actor in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain.

And even that was bittersweet, with the film picking up best director and screenplay while losing in all acting categories.

The reasoning behind the selection process at the awards is seldom straight forward, and I will lose no more time trying to understand it.

But if there is one thing that can win over the nearly 6,000 sceptics at the Academy, is a true story about an American hero.

Stronger, directed by David Gordon Green and adapted from a book by Jeff Bauman, tells the story of how Bauman lost both his legs in the terror attack at the Boston Marathon.

A first look at the trailer is enough bang your hand on the table and yell: "Give this man an Oscar!". It is also an opportunity for Gyllenhaal to do what he does best: play with the audience's emotions, alternating between deeply fragile and scarily explosive.

He has shown similar acting many times before.

In Denis Villeneuve's superb thriller Prisoners, he plays Detective Loki, a man haunted by the case he is trying to solve.

Loki is both violent and kind, intelligent and rough, confronting yet inherently shy - with Gyllenhaal, we're never sure.

The same happens with his 2014 broadcast news thriller Nightcrawler, in which he plays a freelance newsman thirsty for blood.

Even weaker films, like Antoine Fuqua's Southpaw or Jean-Marc Vallee's Demolition are worth every second of our time due to his powerful performance.

And then there is Zodiac, David Fincher's masterpiece and arguably the best film of the 21st century.

Gyllenhaal's low-profile cartoonist moonlights as an amateur detective, and the transformation is as slow-burning and gripping as the narrative itself - and as worthy of an Oscar as Casey Affleck's self-contained performance in Manchester By The Sea.

At the end of the day, it matters little if Gyllenhaal takes the Oscar or not because, by avoiding the stature of movie star, he also manages to dodge easy traps from big studios.

He picks his projects because he trusts its directors, and we pick his films because we trust him.