Jake Gyllenhaal is breaking into the fragrance sphere, which can only mean one thing. We all must know about his bathing habits. The Oscar-nominated actor revealed in a new interview with Vanity Fair that he now sees bathing to be “less necessary at times.” Gyllenhaal, 40, is the latest actor to admit to bathing habits that are a little different from the rest of us, following Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, who admitted they do not bathe their children daily.
Gyllenhaal, whose Vanity Fair interview comes after he appeared in a new commercial for Prada’s Luna Rossa Ocean, said most of his water experiences in New York City come from showing and visiting piers. He was then asked if there was anything revelatory about his shower ritual. “I always am baffled that loofahs come from nature,” Gyllenhaal said. “They feel like they’ve been made in a factory but, in fact, it’s just not true. Since I was young, it’s amazed me.”
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“More and more I find bathing to be less necessary, at times,” the Brokeback Mountain actor continued. “I do believe because Elvis Costello is wonderful, that good manners and bad breath get you nowhere. So I do that. But I do also think that there’s a whole world of not bathing that is also really helpful for skin maintenance, and we naturally clean ourselves.”
Just last week, Kunis and Kutcher revealed that they do not bathe their children – Wyatt Isabelle, 6, and Dimitri Portwood, 4 – on a daily basis during an appearance on Dax Shepard‘s Armchair Expert podcast. They said they only wash their children if dirt is visible. Shepard agreed with this, but Armchair Expert co-host Monica Padman did not.
“I can’t believe I am in the minority here of washing my whole body in the shower. Who taught you not to wash?” Padman asked. Shepard said she “should not be getting rid of the natural oil on your skin with a bar of soap every day.” Kunis said she didn’t have hot water growing up, so she didn’t shower much as a child herself. “But when I had children, I also didn’t wash them every day,” Kunis explained. “I wasn’t that parent that bathed my newborns — ever.”
Kutcher admitted he doesn’t bathe himself every day. “I wash my armpits and my crotch daily, and nothing else ever,” The Ranch actor said. “I got a bar of Lever 2000 that delivers every time. Nothing else.” Kutcher also doesn’t use soap when washing his face after a gym workout.
The idea that bathing daily with soap isn’t the best thing for your body has gained traction in recent years. It could strip your body of essential oils. “When you wash it, you break it down. You actually break down a wall so you become leaky. And you can increase what comes through the skin,” Sandy Skotnicki, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Medicine, told CTV News in 2019. The Beyond Soap author said she hoped people would re-evaluate the “nonsensical” idea that our bodies need to be washed with soap daily. “You can just rinse and just wash your bits. So we’re not saying don’t shower,” Skotnicki added. “When you’re just sitting in an office all day, are you dirty? The answer is ‘no.’” So it sounds like Gyllenhaal might have the right idea after all.
