LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- In the new film, "Nightcrawler," Jake Gyllenhaal stars as an enterprising young man who stumbles upon the underground world of freelance journalism in Los Angeles.
The actor first learned about this overnight world of videographers, also known as stringers, while shadowing Los Angeles Police Department officers for another film, "End of Watch."
"I'd go to crime scenes with officers and there'd be stringers there too," he said. "So I had this strange 180-degree point-of-view of that world on either side of it. All of that together was some of my research, but that was just the beginning really."
Gyllenhaal's character pushes many boundaries as far as ethics are concerned. But the actor doesn't see his character as the movie's villain. He puts that title on Rene Russo's character of an overly ambitious newsroom boss.
"She enables Lou to do what he does," Gyllenhaal said. "She buys his footage and cuts it together and creates the story and manipulates it."
The actor went through quite a physical transformation for this film, dropping around 30 pounds. He says he and director Dan Gilroy had an unusual inspiration for the role.
"We thought he's a coyote. That's who he is," he said. "He's sort of a ruthless and hungry and wild, and then I just started like looking at images and seeing them all. They are all very thin and I just thought this guy has to be thin and hungry and starving in a way and wanting to succeed and would tear throats out to get there."
"Nightcrawler" is rated R and is in theaters now.