It’s an odd thing, having a Hollywood A-lister cast his eye over your decor. But, thanks to Zoom, Jake Gyllenhaal is beaming straight into my distinctly un-A-listy south London living room, and he has some feedback. “Hey, I like your meditation bowl,” he says, spotting a souvenir from Nepal over my shoulder. “We all need a little bit of that right now,” he adds, sleek in a black polo neck as he speaks from his New York apartment – alas, his own interior design is hidden by a virtual backdrop.
Has some vibrative ‘om’ chanting helped him though the difficult past year? “I’ve meditated for years, which is why I sprang to attention when I saw your bowl. It helps me stay focused, definitely,” says the 40-year-old, who rose to fame in the early 2000s thanks to star turns in films such as Donnie Darko and The Good Girl; for Brokeback Mountain in 2005 he won a Bafta.