Jake Gyllenhaal vs. Joshua Jackson

You win some, you lose some. And if you’re like Jake Gyllenhaal, you win some, only to have them revoked.

Conversely, if you’re like Joshua Jackson, you win some that your Gyllenhaal counterpart won first, only to involuntarily lose.

And if you are like either actor, you lose some big ones to suave, versatile British actors.

At 36 going on 37, Gyllenhaal is in a decisively more glamorous position today than Jackson, two years his senior. Critic after critic is citing Stronger as a plausible springboard to his first Oscar victory. If nothing else, it would be more surprising than not if he garners his second Academy nomination.

Despite his own stretches of mainstream success, that would be two more than Jackson can speak of so far. But that is the difference a quarter-century can make.

The ongoing theatrical screenings of Stronger overlap with the silver anniversary of Jackson’s high point as a child actor. And that peak, by extension, was an early nadir for Gyllenhaal.

Going into The Mighty Ducks, produced in 1991 and 1992, both boys were coming off their first film appearance. Jackson had a small role in Crooked Hearts, while Gyllenhaal portrayed Billy Crystal’s son in City Slickers.

A descendent of Swedish nobility and product of Hollywood royalty, Gyllenhaal had a blue-blooded advantage entering the Ducks auditions. His background, and maybe more importantly what he did with it, got him the role of Charlie Conway.

The problem: Minnesota was the filming location, two time zones away from home in Los Angeles. And he would need to be there for two months in the middle of the school year. For those reasons, his parents overruled the casting decision.

A decade after The Mighty Ducks, Gyllenhaal and Jackson were in the casting pool for another trilogy, Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman.

Though a Pacific Coast product himself (Vancouver to be exact), Jackson had permission to fill Gyllenhaal’s void. Even if not for that abrupt opening, it is a safe bet he would have been cast in another role.

As it was, Disney’s 1992 hockey flick marked Jackson’s second credit. Gyllenhaal had to wait until 1993’s A Dangerous Woman for his sophomore stint. The same year also saw his third film appearance in Josh and S.A.M.

Not a bad way to bounce back. But with Gyllenhaal being near 11 at time of his Mighty Ducks debacle, it is little surprise the deprivation of instant gratification stung.

“I definitely remember, like, crying on the kitchen counter,” he told Howard Stern in July of 2015.

When the ice chips settled, Jackson had an early upper hand. His celebrity status proliferated with the help of the two Mighty Ducks sequels. For the original, he shared a 1993 Young Artist nomination with his castmates.

Gyllenhaal would ultimately match that achievement, though not until 2000, the year after October Sky. One notable difference favoring him on the scorecard was his solo status versus Jackson’s ensemble nomination.

Regardless, the would-be Charlie and the actual Charlie were well past their respective Duck-induced despondence and delight by then. And they had each found their hardware-caliber niches on the big and small screen, respectively.

But they were not done crossing competitive career paths. A decade after Ducks, Gyllenhaal and Jackson were in the casting pool for another trilogy, Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman. In September 2003, MTV cited both men among the contenders for the title role in Batman Begins.

Jackson’s Batman bid entailed his chance to show that his silver-screen stardom did not evaporate with childhood and the ’90s. Gyllenhaal’s was an opportunity to rinse out the vinegar from losing his Spiderman tryout to Tobey Maguire the year prior.

Neither was to be, as Christian Bale beat them both. Ironically, for that, he starred opposite Jake’s sister, Maggie Gyllenhaal, in 2008’s The Dark Knight.

But while Bale was drawing acclaim for his first Batman performance in the summer of 2005, Gyllenhaal’s Brokeback Mountain awaited its autumn release. By the next Academy Awards, he had his first Oscar nomination. And he got it by working with the late Heath Ledger three years before Ledger played the Joker to Bale’s Batman.

Jackson was in a less mainstream vicinity by then, but still drawing consideration for hardware. For Aurora Borealis, he took the best actor title from the 2005 Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival. He was nominated in the same category for the same role at the 2006 Satellite Awards.

Jackson’s only other glimmer of glamour for film acting came in his native land. His lead part in One Week earned him that category’s prize at the 2010 Genie Awards.

In between, a return to TV via Fringe marked a wave of perennial Teen Choice nominations, though he never renewed the golden touch of Dawson’s Creek. (As Pacey, he had tallied three straight Teen Choice victories from 1999 to 2001.)

With his latest TV endeavor, Jackson has caught up with Gyllenhaal’s tally at the People’s Choice Awards.

Meanwhile, following Brokeback Mountain, Gyllenhaal’s next gush of glory would wait until the turn of the decade.

Had he landed the part of Bruce Wayne (which naturally would have ruled Maggie out of the sequel), he would have followed Jackson’s act as Katie Holmes’ onscreen love interest. And he would have co-starred with Anne Hathaway in 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises.

As it happened, he got to do that twice before Bale via Brokeback Mountain and 2010’s Love & Other Drugs. The comedy yielded his first of two Golden Globe nominations, the second being for 2014’s Nightcrawler.

Against his Conway fill-in, the score is still 2-0 among ballots in that comprehensive guild. But with his latest TV endeavor, Jackson has caught up with Gyllenhaal’s tally at the People’s Choice Awards.

Like at the Golden Globes, Gyllenhaal has not emerged on top, but has nabbed a pair of People’s Choice nominations. He was up for favorite action star in 2011 and favorite dramatic actor in 2013.

With Showtime’s The Affair, Jackson can make the same basic claim. He was in the pool of premium cable actors at the 2016 and 2017 People’s Choice.

He fell short of a triumph on both, which means his TV-yielded award drought since Dawson’s Creek persists. But that still makes three shows combining for at least 15 seasons and at least one significant nomination apiece.

The Mighty Ducks masterminds can take pride in that. The same goes for seeing something in the Stronger star, since his withdrawal as Charlie was not their doing.

Volume of attention aside, both the never-was Charlie and the has-been Charlie are pounding on a threshold ahead of 2018. Will it be the year — 26 years later — they shine simultaneously?