Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal (pronounced Jill-en-hall) (born December 19, 1980 in Los Angeles, California) is an American film actor and up-and-coming youth icon.

Jake is the son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and producer/screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, and the brother of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, who also played his sister in Donnie Darko. The siblings also worked together in the film A Dangerous Woman. His father is of partial Swedish heritage and his mother is Jewish of Ashkenazi heritage. His uncle is Eric Foner, a well known American historian at Columbia University. His father's family is descended from the Swedish noble Gyllenhaal family .