Jake is having a scream (From Times Series)

Jake is having a scream

2:00pm Thursday 10th May 2007 in

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Jake Gyllenhaal knew exactly why he wanted to do his latest movie - it terrified him.

Zodiac is a tense thriller about a real-life serial killer who terrorised the San Francisco area with a series of random killings in the late 60s and early 70s.

Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, a newspaper cartoonist who became obsessed with the case and played a key part in the investigation.

"The first time I read the script, the murders, in particular, were terrifying," said Gyllenhaal. "I remember flipping through the pages and thinking, This is real, this actually happened'. I immediately wanted to do it."

It was not just the murders that were terrifying. When Gyllenhaal saw the finished script from director David Fincher he realised it was going to be a mammoth undertaking.

"I read a draft he had done and it was 200 pages," said Gyllenhaal, pointing out that would amount to more than three hours on screen.

"It included the terrifying murders and there was still all this character stuff in between all of it was real and I thought this is amazing'."

Playing a real person also provided a challenge for the 26-year-old, although he has done it before in earlier movies such as October Sky.

"When you are working on it as an actor, it has less to do with me obsessing about the facts than why Robert Graysmith found it so fun," he said.

"I think Robert found it fun. I think what is hard for people to understand is this man enjoyed searching for this person, whereas a cop would have done it because it was his job, or a journalist would have done it because it was his job.

"Robert really had fun. It was like a kid at a candy store, which I thought was an interesting juxtaposition to your normal detective story."

The Zodiac killer taunted the police and the media by sending them puzzles and coded clues. The real Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist with the San Francisco Chronicle, just happened to be in the room when the paper was sent one of his clues.

It immediately got his attention and sparked an obsession that has lasted more than 30 years and led to him being portrayed on screen by an Oscar-nominated actor.

"I watched Jake interpret my character on several occasions," said Graysmith, who was a frequent visitor to the set.

"He was not doing an impersonation of me but an interpretation of me. I thought he caught my enthusiasm and excitability, my Southern upbringing, polite deference and eccentricities perfectly."

For Gyllenhaal, Zodiac turned into something of a marathon.

He has done long films before such as his blockbuster sci-fi hit The Day After Tomorrow but that had a lot of effects, this was something else entirely.

"We shot the movie in six-and-a-half months, a 110-day schedule, where you are talking most of the time and it is a story about finding a serial killer.

It was gruelling in terms of the mindset you had to be in."

But he was not alone. Fincher had assembled a quality cast for the main roles that also included Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo. "An unlikely trio", as Gyllenhaal described them.

"Mark and Robert are highly experienced, much more experienced than me, and I was learning from them every day."

Earlier, Gyllenhaal referred to people who revelled in the Zodiac experience and those who were disturbed by it. He is not saying which camp he was in, but he does offer the odd clue.

"The audience gets to experience it for two-and-a-half hours, but I think it is a big jolt to you when you're in that world," he said.

"I don't know if I would ever want to go back into the Zodiac world again, but it is quite a world to be in."