Jake Gyllenhaal's 'Jarhead'

Actor Discusses His Experience With War Film

(CBS)  This fall, Jake Gyllenhaal has three films being released, and he is getting rave reviews for each. He said his role in the Gulf War drama "Jarhead" was a life-changing experience.

"Just Jamie Foxx and all the actors in the film, they're men that I look up to, people I would love to be like. And, eventually, actors I'd like to be like," Gyllenhaal tells The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler.

Oscar winner Foxx ("Ray," "Collateral") plays Staff Sgt. Sykes, a lifer who commands the Surveillance and Target Acquisition (STA) Platoon with bulldog tenacity and a sense of nationalism.

Gyllenhaal takes the central role of Tony "Swoff" Swofford. Peter Sarsgaard ("Kinsey," "Shattered Glass") portrays Troy, Swoff's partner in their elite unit of Marine scout/snipers. And Oscar winner Chris Cooper ("Seabiscuit," "Adaptation") portrays Lt. Col. Kazinski, the commander who itches to unleash his killing machine on an overmatched enemy.

"Then, more than all of that, I think Sam Mendes, the director, kind of insisted all the time on a presence," Gyllenhaal says. "I guess it's sort of living in the moment, performing in the moment. If I came in one day and was exhausted, I got an hour's worth of sleep, he was happy that I used that. It was like anything I came to set with he wanted and used. It was the sort of presence and made me feel like I could make no mistakes and do no wrong."

The film is based on the best-selling book by Anthony Swofford, who wrote about his experience in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War.

"This is one particular guy's experience," Gyllenhaal says. "It's not what you're used to in war. People, especially with war movies, are used to a tremendous amount of action, and a lot of combat, and watching typical situations that we've seen in a lot of films about a war. This film was very different. It was all about that waiting. In a lot of ways, I think that boredom was their war."

The film is also different in that it does not make a statement about the war in Iraq.

"I think a lot of people see it as a reflection of the current war somehow, or want it to be a reflection of that," he says. "It is its own war. My character says at the end of the movie: 'Every war is different. Every war is the same.' For a lot of people, I think, the topography and the administration and all of those things make it seem like the same thing. But for the soldiers who fought in this war, I think it's very much their war, and very different from the war that the soldiers are fighting in now. And it is very specific to them. Hopefully, we've done them service. It was a very different experience."

In preparation for his role, Gyllenhaal had to do a lot of training to achieve the required physicality with Sarsgaard, who happens to be Maggie Gyllenhaal's boyfriend.