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Jake Gyllenhaal Cried When His Parents Forbade Him From Starring in The Mighty Ducks

Jake Gyllenhaal
Jake Gyllenhaal said that he cried when his parents wouldn't allow him to star in The Mighty Ducks in 1992

Jake Gyllenhaal really just wanted to quack. The Southpaw actor recalled a hysterical story about wanting to be in The Mighty Ducks during a visit to Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show on Wednesday, July 22.

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A working child actor at the time, Gyllenhaal, 34, auditioned for one of the main roles in the 1992 classic and presumably got it. But his parents, director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, didn’t let him accept the new gig.

“I definitely remember crying on the kitchen counter,” Gyllenhaal told Stern, 61. “I was like, ‘You guys are crazy.'”

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Gyllenhaal’s parents didn’t mind the script, but decided he should concentrate on school first.

“My parents were like, ‘Look, you’re about to enter junior high school, you gotta get your education, that’s the most important thing. I promise you, you hate us now, but you’ll thank us later,'” Gyllenhaal said. “And I do.”

D2 the mighty ducks
D2: The Mighty Ducks

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Gyllenhaal may have said goodbye to Charlie Conway, Coach Bombay, and what could have been, but he was, oddly enough, allowed to appear in other movies around the same time. He made his film debut in 1991’s City Slickers, followed by A Dangerous Woman and Josh and S.A.M. in 1993. The Mighty Ducks franchise, which starred Joshua Jackson and Emilio Estevez, went on to make D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994) and D3: The Mighty Ducks (1996).

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