Getting to Know: Ryan Gosling

Cinema Paradiso's Getting to Know series celebrates the biggest stars in screen history. In addition to highlighting key films, the articles also seek to introduce users to the people who made them. Our focus this time falls on Ryan Gosling.

According to GQ magazine, 'Ryan Gosling Is Hollywood's Handsomest, Wittiest, Leadingest Leading Man.' The fortysomething Canadian has tended to steer clear of comic-book blockbusters, but he has the versatility to cross between sci-fi epics and intimate romances, lavish musicals and character comedies.

Since bursting on to the scene - his first 10 features resulted in 32 award nominations - he has consistently demonstrated that challenging roles matter more than bumper paydays. As he told one interviewer, he would rather tell stories about the kind of folks he grew up with, because 'they're way more interesting than those you see in movies at the moment'.

Everybody Dance Now

Ryan Thomas Gosling was born in London, Ontario on 12 November 1980. As his father, Thomas, was a travelling salesman for a paper mill, Ryan, mother Donna and older sister Mandi moved around a good deal between homes in the towns of Cornwall and Burlington. Although his parents were Mormons, Ryan struggled to connect with the religion, even though it influenced every aspect of his life.

Gosling hated being a kid and, when he was four, he took a set of steak knives to his kindergarten class after watching Ted Kotcheff's First Blood (1982), which was the film in which Sylvester Stallone first played John Rambo. A healthier influence were Lou Ferrigno and Arnold Schwarzenegger, as his parents were big bodybuilding fans. The pair co-starred in George Butler and Robert Fiore's documentary, Pumping Iron (1977), which led to Ferrigno being cast in the title role of the TV series, The Incredible Hulk (1977-90).

Donna also passed on a love of the films of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Tap their names into the searchline to learn more about the 28 features and numerous TV shows available from Cinema Paradiso. Gosling was also a fan of serials like Dick Tracy (1937), Dick Tracy's G-Men (1939) and Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947) and came to like the idea of becoming an actor because he could not only be someone else, but he could also not have to be himself.

From an early age, Mandi and Ryan sang together at family weddings. He also occasionally took to the stage with his uncle, whose Presley tribute act was called Evis Perry. Gosling also joined a local ballet troupe and made a name for himself at the age of seven when he appeared on a TV talent show performing a suggestive dance routine. Footage from the early 1990s exists online of Gosling performing with the Elite Dance Studio and singing Percy Sledge's 'When a Man Loves a Woman'. Both clips are well worth seeking out.

Being on stage boosted the young Ryan's self-confidence, which was hampered by the fact he struggled to read. He was bullied throughout elementary school and only started making friends around 14. Indeed, although he attended Gladstone Public School, Cornwall Collegiate and Vocational School and Lester B. Pearson High School, he also had a spell being home-tutored by his mother, who took time off work as a secretary to give her son 'a sense of autonomy that I've never really lost'.

Donna raised the children alone after divorcing Thomas when Ryan was 13. He has claimed that being the only male in the household taught him to 'think like a girl'. Yet, around this time, he also decided to ditch his Canadian accent by modelling his voice on Marlon Brando. But things were about to change for the better.

Teen Star

In 1993, 12 year-old Ryan Gosling attended a audition in Montreal. Much to his delight, he was offered a two-year contract to join the Mouseketeers for the Disney Channel's revival of The Mickey Mouse Club. Relocating to Orlando, Florida, he was soon sharing air time with Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. Indeed, he spent six months living with the latter's family after Justin's mother, Lynn Harless, became Ryan's legal guardian after Donna returned to Canada for work.

Her son followed when Disney cancelled the show in 1995 and Gosling stared guesting on such shows as Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1992-2000) and Goosebumps (1995-98). He also landed the recurring role of Sean Hanlon in Breaker High (1997-98) before being asked to relocate to New Zealand at the age of 18 to take the title role in all 50 episodes of the Fox Kids series, Young Hercules (1998-99).

Gosling reckons he learnt how to focus during his stint in television. However, he realised that he wanted to play a variety of roles rather than becoming synonymous with one. Moreover, he had concluded that the tight schedules left little room for complexity in television acting.

Consequently, having made his feature bow as Kenny, alongside Burt Reynolds and Louise Fletcher, in Robert Tinnell's Frankenstein and Me (1996), Gosling was cast as country music-loving cornerback Alan Bosley in Remember the Titans (2000), Boaz Yakin's biopic of inspirational college football coach, Bill Yoast.

The following year, he landed his first starring role in Henry Bean's The Believer (2001), which follows Jewish student Daniel Balint to New York, where he joins a neo-Nazi group led by Curtis Zumpf (Billy Zane) and Lina Moebius (Theresa Russell). As Gosling later remembered, 'I got the part and my life changed. I went to Sundance and when I left I had a career and I had choice.'

Indie Idol

Within a few short months, Gosling had gone from having no agent to having the world at his feet. Although The Believer only received a limited release, the critics singled out Gosling for praise, with the result that he was paired with Michael Pitt in Barbet Schroeder's Murder By Numbers (2002), as the high-schoolers who believe they can get away with the perfect crime. In seeking to frame the janitor for kidnap and murder, however, Richard Haywood and Justin Pendleton bargain without tenacious detective, Cassie Maywether (Sandra Bullock).

The chance to co-star with David Morse persuaded Gosling to sign up to Alex and Andrew J. Smith's Drive to Dream (aka The Slaughter Rule, 2002). Once again, Gosling was asked to play a teenager, as Gideon Ferguson joins a six-a-side football team after being dropped from the school gridiron squad in rural Montana. At first, coach Roy Chutney (Morse) seems like a father figure, but Gideon begins to have his doubts. One critic compared Gosling to a young Matt Dillon, but the picture was barely seen, as it was only released in three theatres. Yet Cinema Paradiso users can catch up with this often overlooked drama and without even leaving home.

They can also see Matthew Ryan Hodge's The United States of Leland (2003), which failed to secure a European release after disappointing at the domestic box-office. Although cast as another teen, Gosling conveys the emotional detachment of Leland P. Fitzgerald, who is coaxed by prison teacher Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle) into revealing why he suddenly decided to murder a classmate with learning difficulties.

However, Gosling changed tack completly and became pin-up overnight in playing playing lumber worker Noah Calhoun in Nick Cassavetes's adaptation of Nicholas Sparks's novel, The Notebook (2004). Basing his performance on co-star Sam Shepard's work in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), Gosling creates sparks with compatriot Rachel McAdams, as Allison Hamilton, the teenage heiress who comes to South Carolina and finds summer love.

Ironically, the leads had not got along at the start of the shoot. But they wound up an item, as Entertainment Weekly proclaimed that they had shared the All-Time Best Movie Kiss. In addition to an MTV Movie Award, Gosling also won four Teen Choice Awards. But he had no intention of becoming a romantic heart-throb and he next chose to play psychologically disturbed art student Henry Letham in Marc Forster's Stay (2005). He's off screen for much of the middle of this unsettling thriller, as psychiatrist Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor) tries to piece together the clues to explain his disappearance. However, he returns for an ingenious twist set on Brooklyn Bridge.

From taking a key supporting role, Gosling returned to top billing in Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's Half Nelson (2006). While preparing to play drug-addicted history teacher Dan Dunne, Gosling rented an apartment in Brooklyn and spent a month shadowing a middle-school teacher to ensure he was as authentic as possible. His efforts paid off, as he was compared in some quarters to Marlon Brando for his immersive performance. Moreover, he became the seventh-youngest recipient of an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, pipping Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (1941) by 207 days.

Being an independent release, Half Nelson generated a fraction of The Notebook's box-office takings. But it confirmed Gosling's reputation for taking dramatic chances and he reinforced this by playing an introverted loner who falls in love with an inflatable doll in Craig Gillespie's Lars and the Real Girl (2007). Drawing on the influence of James Stewart's Oscar-nominated turn in Henry Koster's Harvey (1950), Gosling received a Golden Globe nomination. However, such recognition failed to prevent the film from misfiring with audiences not quite sure what to make of its quirky storyline. See for yourself, with Cinema Paradiso!

Gosling's other completed film of 2007 saw him co-star with Anthony Hopkins in Gregory Hoblit's Fracture. Inexperienced trial lawyer Willy Beachum (Gosling) thinks he's got a slam-dunk verdict when aeronautical engineer Theodore Crawford (Hopkins) guns down his wife for having an affair with an LAPD cop. But Crawford opts to defend himself and proves to be a slippery customer. Drawn to the part because Beachum was so flawed, Gosling again did plenty of background research and was feted by critics who were impressed by the way he matched Hopkins's scene-stealing gambits.

Unfortunately, none of this did him an ounce of good when he turned up to film Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones (2009), only to be told that he had gained 60lbs in vain because writer-producer Fran Walsh felt he still looked too young to play Saoirse Ronan's grieving father. The role of Jack Salmon went to Mark Wahlberg and Gosling embarked upon a three-year break from film-making.

The Comeback Kid

Having recharged his batteries working in his Los Angeles restaurant, Tagine, Gosling returned to the screen in Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine (2010), which the actor also executive produced. He hoped to make 'a movie to celebrate people's faults, to demystify romance and to make something that felt real' and certainly succeeded in a non-linear saga that cuts between the courtship of high-school dropout Dean Pereira (Gosling) and medical student Cindy Heller (Michelle Williams) and the breakdown of their marriage. Gosling won a Golden Globe for his performance, while Williams added an Oscar nomination to her Best Actress Prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

'I've never had more energy,' Gosling told the press. 'I'm more excited to make films than I used to be. I used to kind of dread it. It was so emotional and taxing. But I've found a way to have fun while doing it. And I think that translates into the films.'

There was little to smile about in Andrew Jarecki's All Good Things (2010), however, which was based on the life of real estate millionaire Robert Durst. Gosling plays David Marks, who is investigated after his wife, Katie (Kirsten Dunst), suddenly disappears. But he found the shoot disconcerting and has probably not watched Jarecki's follow-up documentary series, The Jinx (2015), in which he recycled interview footage with Durst to examine his story in more detail.

The year ended with Gosling also working on an actuality, as he narrated and co-produced Philip Montgomery's ReGeneration (2010), which explores how millennial youth responds to news stories. This was Gosling's third involvement in a documentary, as he had also voiced some of the diary entries written by young people during the Holocaust in Lauren Lazin's I'm Still Here (2005) and featured in Angelina Jolie's study of global crisis zones, A Place in Time (2007). However, plans to make a documentary on the refugee camps in Darfur and a drama about child soldiers in Uganda failed to materialise.

Around this period, Gosling started taking lessons at a cocktail bar in order to play serial ladykiller Jacob Palmer in Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's Crazy, Stupid, Love. This was his first attempt at comedy and he learnt the ropes from a master, as Steve Carell excelled as Cal Weaver, the cuckolded milquetoast who undergoes Jacob's crash course in picking up women, while his tutor is busy falling for Cal's daughter, Hannah (Emma Stone). With critics comparing him to George Clooney as the screen's next sex symbol, Gosling landed a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.

This was the biggest commercial hit of Gosling's career to date and he hoped for another in joining Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Ides of March (2011), George Clooney's adaptation of Beau Willimon's 2004 play, Farragut North. As a Canadian, the mechanics of American politics had always intrigued Gosling and he spars pugnaciously with Hoffman as Stephen Meyers and Paul Zara collaborate on a campaign strategy to land Pennsylvania governor Mike Morris (Clooney) the Democratic presidential nomination.

However, the critics preferred Gosling's turn as the unnamed Hollywood stunt performer who moonlights as a getaway driver in Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011). Based on a James Sallis novel, this no-holds thriller earned the Dane the Best Director prize at Cannes. It also proved that Gosling could play action heroes, with the notices comparing him with Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen, as he also got to show his sensitive side in bonding with Carey Mulligan and Kaden Leos, as the wife and young son of his partner in crime, Oscar Isaac.

His Own Man

In reuniting with Derek Cianfrance on The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Gosling got to meet the love of his life. Eve Mendes plays the ex-lover who reveals that Gosling is the father of her child and he quits his job as a motorcycle stuntman in order to be near his family. However, he needs an income and starts robbing banks with mechanic Ben Mendelsohn. Romance blossomed on the set and Goslng and Mendes are now the proud parents of two daughters, Esmeralda and Amada. No wonder their father later claimed that this was 'the best experience I have ever had making a film'.

He also enjoyed reteaming with Emma Stone on Ruben Ferguson's Gangster Squad (2013), which was based on a book by former New York Times editor Paul Lieberman. The pair find themselves on opposite sides of the law, as Stone plays Grace Faraday, a confidante of Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), who is under surveillance by cops John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) and Jerry Wooters (Gosling) on the orders of LAPD chief, Bill Parker (Nick Nolte).

The 1949 setting is impeccably recreated and the acting is top drawer. But the critics were disappointed by the screenplay and were no more impressed by Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives (2013). Dedicated to the cult Chilean director, Alejandro Jodorowsky, this violent thriller was filmed in Thailand and Gosling received Muay Thai coaching to play Julian Thompson, an American who uses his martial arts gym as a front for drug running until his younger brother is killed and their mother, Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), demands revenge.

Gosling only had 17 lines throughout the entire feature and has none at all in either Noaz Deshe's White Shadow (2013), which he co-executive produced, and Lost River (2014), which saw him make his debut as a writer-director. Christina Hendricks stars as the debt-ridden mother of two who winds up working in a seedy burlesque to keep bank manager Ben Mendelsohn at bay and prevent her teenage son from falling into the clutches of crime boss Matt Smith. The kinder reviews claimed the film resembled a collaboration between David Lynch and Harmony Korine on a remake of Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955). But Cinema Paradiso offers users the chance to make up their own minds with a single click.

This fantasy noir was made during another of Gosling's time-outs. He told reporters, 'I've lost perspective on what I'm doing. I think it's good for me to take a break and reassess why I'm doing it and how I'm doing it.' When he returned, he proved as disarmingly good as ever as bond salesman Jared Vennett in Adam McKay's The Big Short (2015), a smartly satirical ensemble assault on financial wheeler-dealing that was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

He remained in a lighter vein as 1970s private investigator Holland March in Shane Black's The Nice Guys (2016), which paired him with Russell Crowe in a search for a missing porn star. Inspired by Brett Halliday's novel, Blue Murder, this off-kilter buddy picture has followed Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) in attracting a considerable cult following.

While this noirish romp made a small profit, Damien Chazelle's La La Land (2016) made a small fortune ($440+ million from a $30 million budget) in reviving the musical genre and almost winning Best Picture at the Oscars. Emma Stone did win Best Actress for her performance as Mia Dolan, the Warner Bros barista whose dream of becoming an actress comes true with a little help from struggling jazz pianist, Sebastian Wilder. If Stone and Gosling's duet on 'City of Stars' was the tuneful highlight, their planetarium dance soared its way into screen history.

Despite winning another Golden Globe, Gosling missed out at the Academy Awards, as Casey Affleck prevailed for his work in Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester By the Sea (2016). However, he remained in a musical frame of mind in playing BV in Terrence Malick's Song to Song (2017). The pair had been slated to work together back in 2004, when Gosling had been cast in Malick's unrealised biopic of Che Guevara. Instead, he got to play a Texan singer-songwriter who seeks solace from his feud with producer Michael Fassbender (who is sleeping with Gosling's girlfriend, Rooney Mara) by having a fling with Cate Blanchett, an elegant New Yorker, who happens to resemble his mother.

Christian Bale and Natalie Portman co-starred in this polarising picture, which was more than a little overshadowed by Gosling's other 2017 release. He plays Officer K in Blade Runner 2049, Ridley Scott's long-awaited sequel to Blade Runner (1982), the much-edited adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?', which remains among the finest films ever produced in the science fiction genre. While filming a fight scene with Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, Gosling was accidentally punched in the face and laughed it off because not everybody gets thumped by Indiana Jones.

The following year, Gosling hooked up with Damien Chazelle on First Man (2018), which remains his latest release to date. Adapted from James R. Hansen's 2005 book, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, this poignant biopic examines the humanity of the first person to step on to the Moon in July 1969. A far cry from the gung-ho heroics of Philip Kaufman's take on Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff (1983), the film was largely overlooked during award season, which is no reflection on Gosling's measured display of quiet courage.

Rumours have certainly been swirling during his most recent absence from the screen. He was mentioned as a possible producer on an adaptation of Jeff Lemire's graphic novel, The Underwater Welder, while other sources insisted that he was going to produce and headline a version of Andy Weir's novel, Project Hail Mary, about a lone astronaut seeking to save Planet Earth. Another literary option appears to have been The Actor, which Duke Johnson based on the Donald E. Westlake tome, Memory, in which a performer tries to recall his past after being left for dead in 1950s Ohio.

As a longtime fan of Universal's 1930s horror cycle, Gosling has also been linked with a Derek Cianfrance remake of George Waggner's The Wolf Man (1941), which starred Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy and Bela Lugosi. What is certain, however, is that Gosling will be seen later this year as CIA agent Court Gentry opposite Chris Evans's dangerous rival, Lloyd Hansen, in Anthony and Joe Russo's take on Mark Greaney's bestselling spy thriller, The Gray Man. He seems set to follow this by playing Ken opposite Margot Robbie in Greta Gerwig's Barbie, which is due to reach cinemas in 2023.