Madness to the Method
Ryan Gosling may be an actor of contradictions, but there's no second-guessing his talent.
By Jenelle Riley
Ryan Gosling can pinpoint the exact moment when he realized he had earned a reputation as an overly serious actor. He showed up to work on the Toronto set of Lars and the Real Girl, in which he plays the title role (of Lars, not the Real Girl), and found the cast and crew ignoring him. "I would try to say hi to people, and they wouldn't answer me," Gosling recalls. The last straw came when his driver refused to make conversation with him.
"I finally snapped and said, 'Why are you being so mean to me? We're going to be stuck with each other for a while; can't we have a conversation?' He said, 'We were told not to talk to you. They said no one is allowed to speak to you or look you in the eye, and if we do, we should address you as Lars. " Gosling can't help but laugh at the memory. "I was so embarrassed. I had to go up to everybody and say, 'Please, please, speak to me!'"
It may sound outrageous to the actor, but one can understand how easy it would be to believe such a story. From his searing portrayal of a Jewish Nazi skinhead in 2001's The Believer to his Oscar®-nominated turn as a crack-addicted teacher in last year's Half Nelson, the actor has built a résumé of dark, daring performances that have earned him the respect of audiences and peers. Though his filmography isn't as long as those of some actors — he's notoriously picky about accepting roles — every part he has chosen has added to his reputation as one of the best young actors working today. It's difficult to fathom that he could get even better than he is already, at 26 years old.
So it's somewhat surprising to see, in real life, what a goofball Gosling is. He's a bit of a contradiction — a "serious" actor who claims anyone can do it. He denies having a method, though he often engages in painstaking research for a part. And despite his somber onscreen roles, in real life he can't stop kidding around. "I take myself very seriously," he mocks, unable to resist bursting into laughter. Asked how he handles it when people call him the best actor of his generation, he turns to a passerby and kids, "Hey, did you hear that? I'm the best actor of my generation." So that's how he handles it: with humor? "I just don't know how to react," he finally says. "It's very kind to hear. But what do I say?"
There have been glimpses of his sharp wit before — most noticeably when he accepted Film Independent's Spirit Award for best actor for Half Nelson earlier this year, when he joked he won only because fellow nominee Forest Whitaker was tired of giving acceptance speeches. When Gosling says he didn't expect to win, it's not false modesty: He bet money against himself. "I was just sure it wasn't going to happen, and everyone around me was positive it was," he says. "So I finally said, 'Let's put money on it.' I thought, 'If I lose, I make money. So either way, I would win.'" Asked how much money he lost, Gosling quickly says, "Doesn't matter," before admitting, "A lot."
With Lars and the Real Girl, audiences will again see what critics saw with Half Nelson. Gosling stars as an emotionally stunted man, full of nervous tics, who has shut himself off from the world. He refuses to join his brother and sister-in-law (Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer) for meals. He avoids the advances of his sweet co-worker (Kelli Garner). And he has difficulty relating to everyone around him. Things change when he brings home his girlfriend: a gentle, religious girl named Bianca who starts to bring him out of his shell. The only problem? Bianca is a lifelike plastic sex doll Lars ordered off the Internet. But what sounds like a one-joke premise plays like a fairy tale, as Bianca begins to bring out the best in the residents of the sleepy Midwestern town. Those looking for a raucous comedy will be surprised to find Lars is a drama — though it has hilarious moments. And it's all anchored by Gosling's charming, sincere turn as Lars.
Real Make-Believe
Craig Gillespie, the director of Lars and the Real Girl, says Gosling was his first choice for the part. "And to this day, I can't believe I got him," Gillespie says. Gosling received Nancy Oliver's script on a Friday. By Monday he was talking to Gillespie. Though already a respected commercial director, Gillespie had only one other film to his credit: the long-shelved comedy Mr. Woodcock (which was released in September). "Though that film is very different, its look reminded me of Hal Ashby's work," Gosling says.
"Hal Ashby never thought of things as a comedy, and neither did Craig." Gosling was also intrigued that Gillespie was sure the actor could do comedy. "The fact he wanted me was so nuts; I was such an unusual choice," Gosling says. "So maybe it wasn't so much that I thought he would be good; it was that he was willing to hire me." Ultimately the actor was sold by the director's response to one question. "I said to him, 'How are you going to shoot [the doll]?' " Gosling recalls. "And he said, 'I'm going to shoot her like she has a nudity clause.' I said, 'I'm in.' I could tell."
The pair had long discussions about how to qualify Lars' unique condition. They debated calling him autistic. "It was an option to go down that road, but we decided it didn't feel right to label him," he says. "I think he has a very special disorder, and what you're seeing is a beautiful byproduct of that. And to be honest, I related to him so much. I thought, 'If he's nuts, then I am too, because I understand everything he's going for.'"
Also helping him discover the character: a unique choice of facial hair. Gosling was shaving his beard for the part, and before he could get to the mustache, he saw himself in the mirror and realized he had Lars. "All the men in my family have them. It's kind of a rite of passage: You get to a certain age, and you get your mustache," he says. "It just felt like Lars could have been in my family somehow." The studio financing the film was not so happy with the mustache, reportedly going so far as to call Gosling's friend Marc Forster (who directed Gosling in 2005's Stay) and ask him to intervene. "They told Marc, 'We don't know what he's doing; he wants to play the character with a mustache!' " Gillespie recalls. "And Marc said, 'I read that script. I always saw Lars with a mustache.'"
As for the challenges of acting opposite a doll, Gosling says he enjoyed it: "People say you can't take this seriously, but I did achieve a real connection to her. The movie depended on our relationship, but I've never felt more alone with somebody as I did with her. Then he'd say 'Action,' and it was just us, and we were a team. We had a real bond." Because Lars "speaks" for Bianca and imbues her with a personality he's created, in many ways Gosling is playing two roles. "I got in touch with my inner woman," he says. "She was angry."
Young Professional
Gosling has been a professional actor for half his life. Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, he never cared for the school system. After he had several fights, his mother opted to homeschool him, starting when he was 10. He became interested in dancing but soon realized it was no way to make a living. "But then there was acting," he says, "where even if you didn't work very much, when you do work you make enough that you can live a free life." When he was 12, he landed a job on the rebooted Mickey Mouse Club, alongside future superstars Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. He followed that with two seasons in the title role of the TV show Young Hercules, having moved to Los Angeles when he was 16.
Though he has never had formal instruction as an actor, he points to his on-set training. "I've been working since I was 12, and I've done so many different kinds of things," he says. "I did 200 episodes of television, often fighting imaginary monsters. That's a training." Gosling also credits these early years with helping him learn to distance his profession from his personality: "It's a great job for me because I don't attach my identity to it. It's not emotional; it's a means of survival. I wouldn't fit in at many situations or jobs. Every time I went to school or something, I was terrible."
His attitude shifted somewhat when, still in his teens, Gosling auditioned for the lead in The Believer. Henry Bean's controversial film about a brilliant but troubled teen who becomes a violent fanatic was not only a breakthrough role for the actor but also the point at which he began to realize this was a career, not just a job. He says he auditioned several times, noting, "They really put me through the wringer." The actor, who had always approached his work rather casually, suddenly found himself desperate to win the role. "To this day, I don't know why I wanted it so badly," he muses. "I mean, it's a great part, obviously. But I got the feeling from that movie that there was something about myself that I was never going to figure out unless I got to play that character."
With his shaved head and menacing stare, Gosling is utterly mesmerizing in the film. But he downplays the difficulty of such a dark performance. "I hear about some people who really become the character and take it home with them at the end of the day," he says. "I'm not that good. I've never become a character. If anything, they become me. For me, acting is about turning up the parts of you that are like the character and turning down the parts that aren't. But it's all you." So there are parts of Gosling in every character he has played? "Definitely," he says. "But that's the great thing about acting. Anybody can do it; it's really not that hard. And people make it harder for themselves. We're all doing it all the time. With the right direction, anyone can do it professionally."
But, for all his assurances that he can leave a character behind, consider the following: After The Believer, Gosling played killers in Murder by Numbers and The United States of Leland. He began feeling ill and went to the doctor, who told him he wasn't sick. Instead, the doctor pulled out a prescription pad and wrote: "Try a light comedy." The worst part, says Gosling: "He charged me for it."
Spectacularly Regular
Gosling ignored his doctor's advice, though his next film was considerably lighter than the fare he'd been accepting. The Notebook was a frothy soap opera that, by all accounts, shouldn't have worked. It had a director, Nick Cassavetes, who was unproven in the romantic genre. It starred a cast of admired yet not exactly bankable actors. It relied on every cliché in the book. It was an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, for crying out loud. Yet the film succeeded, largely thanks to the winning performances of leads Gosling and Rachel McAdams. Oddly enough, it was the first time Gosling didn't have to audition for a part. "It was a straight-up offer," he says, "which was weird because if there's any movie I should have to audition for, it should have been that." When he first met with Cassavetes, Gosling asked him, "What the hell do you want me for? Nobody would ever want me in a romantic movie. Are you crazy?" Cassavetes' reply, according to Gosling: "That's why I want you. You're a regular guy. You're not even that handsome." Says the actor with a laugh, "I was like, 'Hey, you son of a bitch — oh, wait, you're right.' He wanted the guy he could relate to, and that's why he gave it to me."
The Notebook might be where his reputation as a serious actor first took root. To prepare for his role as the lovesick carpenter, Gosling moved to South Carolina two months before production and built furniture every day. Again, he deflects any suggestion that this was serious research. "For me, you have to take advantage of opportunities movies give you to learn things you would never learn in any other situation," he says. "I was never going to learn to make furniture. And it wasn't that I thought I was going to gain any great insight into the character. But they're paying you, so you have to try everything. I don't know how well those things work for me, but since I'm still here, maybe they do."
The film changed Gosling's life in several ways: It turned him into a bona fide heartthrob and introduced him to McAdams, whom he fought with on set but with whom he later had a real-life romance. It was his first — and remains his only — box office hit as a leading man. Hollywood noticed and began courting the actor with big-budget studio films, none of which caught his interest. "It's happening more and more," Gosling says of such offers. "And it's tempting because it's hard to justify why, just because I wouldn't see this film, other people would. You start to reason all the things you could do with the money, and it messes with your head." He credits his agent and manager, Ilene Feldman of IFA and Carolyn Govers of Artist Management, with helping him reject such offers.
"They never pressure me to do anything I don't want to do," he says. "Ilene has even offered to lend me money so I wouldn't take jobs that I didn't care about. They really believe in me. Anytime I think I could cave in and I don't is because I know they're watching me and we've been working towards a goal. And I don't want to let them down."
Friendly Competition
Instead of taking those big-money offers, Gosling disappeared into the role of crack-addicted teacher Dan Dunne in Half Nelson. He shadowed an inner-city teacher to prepare for the part, and his raw, authentic performance of a dying soul earned raves and unexpectedly threw the actor into the running for an Academy Award®. The entire process was strange to Gosling, but he decided to enjoy the ride. "People get a kick out of it," he says. "I don't think it's necessarily a fair thing to judge. It's not a race. It's not saying one guy is clearly faster or one guy put more balls in the hoop than another." He pauses before adding, " The only thing I think it hurts is that it kind of supports bad habits. You can get further and further away from why they started giving them out in the first place."
In the end, he thinks such awards should be seen as friendly validation. "It's cheesy, but the nominations are encouraging. Especially for us, because Half Nelson was made for $500,000, and I didn't think anybody would see it, and all of a sudden, there we were. It was a great thing — the fact people respected it enough to acknowledge it alongside those other movies. To say that it was emotionally valid even if, monetarily, it didn't compare." Ultimately, Gosling says, it was a relief to watch Whitaker triumph again that night. "I was so glad I didn't win, because I would have said something so stupid," Gosling admits. "I was so unprepared, I would have embarrassed my own family. They'd been so proud of me up till that moment, and I would have blown it."
There's little doubt that Gosling will get another shot at the gold in the future. In a few days, he's off to do The Lovely Bones, an adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel, for director Peter Jackson. The film is narrated by a murdered girl, who looks down on her fracturing family from heaven. Will Gosling be playing another killer? "No, I'm the dad!" he exclaims, adding that no apology is necessary for thinking otherwise. "When I first heard about it, I assumed they wanted me for the killer, too."
When he thinks about what drew him to the story, aside from the beautiful screenplay, he realizes there's a theme in his recent roles. "I guess I'm attracted to characters who, whether it's true or not, they believe something and therefore it becomes true," he says. "There's something Don Quixote-ish about Lars. Like when Don Quixote talks to the prostitutes, thinking they're royalty — when he's talking to them, they are. Because Lars loves Bianca so much, it's like the Velveteen Rabbit: It becomes real. And who are we to say that it's not? Same for Lovely Bones; he chooses to believe his daughter is listening from heaven, and it becomes true. It's a beautiful quality."
Quick Facts
- Earned his first Oscar® nomination this year for his role in Half Nelson, for which he earned the Spirit Award for best actor
- His first regular TV gig was on The Mickey Mouse Club. Other cast members included Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, and Britney Spears
- Hopes to soon make his directorial debut with The Lord's Resistance, co-written with his friend Noaz Deshe, about child soldiers in Uganda
- Plays in the band Dead Man's Bones with Zach Shields.
A feature courtesy of Film Independent's partnership with Back Stage
