Who is Ryan Gosling?
Ryan Gosling first performed as a singer at talent contests. He attended an open audition in Montreal for the TV series "The Mickey Mouse Club" (MMC (1989)) in January 1993, and beat out 17,000 other aspiring actors for a spot on the show. While appearing on "MMC" for two years, he lived with co-star Justin Timberlake's family.
Though he received no formal acting training, after "MMC," Gosling segued into an acting career, appearing on the TV series Young Hercules (1998) and Breaker High (1997), as well as the films The Slaughter Rule (2002), Murder by Numbers (2002), and Remember the Titans (2000). He first attracted serious critical attention with his performance as the Jewish neo-Nazi in the controversial film The Believer (2001), which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. He was cast in the part by writer-director Henry Bean, who believed that Gosling's strict upbringing gave him the insight to understand the character Danny, whose obsessiveness with the Judaism he was born into turns to hatred. He was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award as Best Male Lead in 2002 for the role and won the Golden Aries award from the Russian Guild of Film Critics.
After appearing in the sleeper The Notebook (2004) in 2004, Gosling won the dubious honor of being named one of the 50 Hottest Bachelors by People Magazine. More significantly, he was named the Male Star of Tomorrow at the 2004 Show West convention of movie exhibitors.
Gosling reached a summit of his profession with his performance in Half Nelson (2006), which garnered him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. In a short time, he has established himself as one of the finest actors of his generation. Throughout the subsequent decade, he has become all three of an internet fixation, a box office star, and a critically acclaimed headliner. Blue Valentine (2010), Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011), Drive (2011), The Ides of March (2011), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), The Nice Guys (2016), and La La Land (2016). In 2017, he starred in the long-awaited science fiction sequel Blade Runner 2049 (2017), with Harrison Ford.
Trivia
- According to an interview in GQ, he was the only Mickey Mouse Club cast member that didn't live in the same complex as all the other cast members.
- Gained 60 lbs to play Jack Salmon in The Lovely Bones (2009) by eating melted ice cream. Ultimately he was fired due to creative differences which left him, in his words, "fat and unemployed".
- Unlike many successful actors near his age, he has no entourage and few close friends. He admits to often preferring solitude while not working.
- He played all his filmed piano-playing scenes in La La Land, learning to play the instrument in the months before shooting.
- Built the kitchen table featured in The Notebook (2004) in preparation for his role as Noah.