HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — In the emotional comedy Love & Other Drugs, Anne Hathaway portrays Maggie, an alluring free spirit who won’t let anything, including a formidable personal challenge, tie her down. But she meets her match in Jamie Randall, portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, whose relentless and nearly infallible charm serve him well with women and in the cutthroat world of pharmaceutical sales. Maggie and Jamie’s evolving relationship takes them both by surprise, as they find themselves under the influence of the ultimate drug: love. Most relationships proceed from love to sex. This one goes the opposite direction and thus makes an unexpected film from an unconventional love story.
The film’s pairing of Gyllenhaal and Hathaway sees both actors at the top of their game, taking unexpected risks in bringing their richly delineated characters to life. Gyllenhaal’s Jamie is a charismatic underachiever who’s finally found his niche, as a rep for a drug called Viagra that has just hit the market, launching a thousand jokes as it becomes a pharmaceutical – and cultural – phenomenon. Hathaway is Maggie, a beautiful and talented artist.
Edward Zwick directs, produces and co-wrote the screenplay for this unconventional and realistic romance that explores the nature of love and sex, how sex/lust evolves into love, and the ways people try and figure it all out. “Love & Other Drugs presents two people who are desperate not to go to a deeper, more profound place in their connection to one another,” says Zwick. “But their appeal to each other and the nature of the love are so powerful they defeat the couple’s impulses to resist connecting. Jamie and Maggie just can’t help but fall in love no matter how much they try to avoid it. They surrender to something stronger than their intentions. And that’s fun to watch because it provides comedy and emotion.”
Those themes certainly resonated with the film’s two leads. “Love & Other Drugs is about what it takes to let love in,” says Hathaway. “Love is hard work and it’s scary – and it’s all totally worth it!”
“It’s a comedy and a love story about two people who are running away from the same things: intimacy, connection, and caring," adds Gyllenhaal. "These are some of the most difficult things you can ask of another human being. But the movie is first and foremost a comedy; that’s what we were trying to bring out in almost every scene.”
