Ryan Gosling
Ryan Gosling, born November 12, 1980, is a Canadian actor. His work includes both independent films and major studio features, and his accolades include a Golden Globe Award, along with nominations for three Academy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two British Academy Film Awards.
Gosling began his acting career at age 13 on Disney Channel’s The All New Mickey Mouse Club (1993–1995) and later appeared in other family entertainment programs, including Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Goosebumps. His breakthrough role was as a Jewish neo-Nazi in The Believer (2001), and he gained stardom in the 2004 romantic drama The Notebook. He also starred in critically acclaimed independent dramas such as Half Nelson (2006), Lars and the Real Girl (2007), and Blue Valentine (2010).
In 2011, Gosling had three mainstream successes with the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love, the political drama The Ides of March, and the action thriller Drive. After making his directorial debut with Lost River (2014), he starred in the financial satire The Big Short (2015), the action comedy The Nice Guys (2016), and the romantic musical La La Land (2016).
La La Land won him a Golden Globe and a second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He received further acclaim for the science fiction film Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and the biopic First Man (2018). He played Ken in the fantasy comedy Barbie (2023), which became his highest-grossing release and earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Early life
Ryan Thomas Gosling was born on November 12, 1980, in London, Ontario. His father, Thomas Ray Gosling, worked as a travelling salesman, and his mother, Donna, was a secretary. Both of his parents are of partial French Canadian descent, with some German, English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry. Gosling and his family were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which influenced many aspects of their lives.
Because of his father’s work, they “moved around a lot and Gosling lived in both and Burlington, Ontario. His parents divorced when he was 13, and he and his older sister Mandi lived with their mother, an experience Gosling has credited with programming him “to think like a girl”.
Gosling was educated at Gladstone Public School,Cornwall Collegiate and Vocational School and Lester B. Pearson High School. As a child, he watched Dick Tracy and was inspired to become an actor.He “hated” being a child, was bullied in elementary school, and had no friends until he was “14 or 15”. In school he was always picking fights to impress girls.
In grade one, having been heavily influenced by the action film First Blood, he took steak knives to school and threw them at other children during recess. This incident led to a suspension. He was unable to read, and was evaluated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but was not diagnosed with it and, contrary to false reports, never took medication.
His mother left her job and home-schooled him for a year. He has said homeschooling gave him “a sense of autonomy that I’ve never really lost”. Gosling performed in front of audiences from an early age, encouraged by his sister being a performer.
He and his sister sang together at weddings; he performed with Elvis Perry, his uncle’s Elvis Presley tribute act,and was involved with a local ballet company. Performing boosted his self-confidence as it was the only thing for which he received praise. He developed an idiosyncratic accent because, as a child, he thought having a Canadian accent did not sound “tough”. He began to model his accent on that of Marlon Brando. Gosling dropped out of high school at age 17 to focus on his acting career.
In 1993, 12-year-old Gosling attended an open audition in Montreal for Disney Channel’s revival of The Mickey Mouse Club. After he successfully auditioned, he was given a two-year contract as a Mouseketeer and subsequently moved to Orlando, Florida to film the show. He has said he appeared on-screen infrequently because other children were considered more talented. Nonetheless, he has described the job as the greatest two years of his life.
Fellow cast members on the show included Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Keri Russell, and JC Chasez. Gosling has credited the experience with instilling in him “this great sense of focus. He was specifically close friends with Timberlake because they lived together for six months during the second year of the show. Timberlake’s mother became Gosling’s legal guardian after his own mother had to return to Canada for work reasons. Gosling has said that even though he and Timberlake talk infrequently, they are still supportive of each other.
After the show ended in 1995, Gosling returned to Canada, where he continued to appear in family entertainment television series, including Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1995) and Goosebumps (1996), and starred in Breaker High (1997–98) as Sean Hanlon. When he was 18, he moved to New Zealand to film the Fox Kids adventure series Young Hercules (1998–1999) as the title character.
He later said that he initially enjoyed working on the series, but began to care too much about the show, so it was no longer fun for him. He wanted to spend more time sitting with and devising a character as well as play a variety of roles, so he chose to transition into film and not accept any more television work.
Music career
In 2000, Gosling published a solo album with the misspelled title Angel With Tatooed Wings. The track “Put Me in the Car” from this album was made available for download on the Internet in 2007. Also that year, Gosling and his friend Zach Shields formed the indie rock band Dead Man’s Bones. The two first met in 2005 when Gosling was dating Rachel McAdams and Shields was dating her sister, Kayleen. They initially conceived of the project as a monster-themed musical but settled on forming a band when they realized putting on a stage production would be too expensive. They recorded their eponymous debut album with the Silverlake Conservatory’s Children’s Choir and learned to play all the instruments themselves.
Gosling contributed vocals, piano, guitar, bass guitar and cello to the record. The album was released through ANTI- Records on October 6, 2009. Pitchfork Media was won over by the “unique, catchy and lovably weird record” while Prefix felt the album was “rarely kitschy and never inappropriate”. However, Spin felt the album “doesn’t reverse the rule that actors make dubious pop musicians”and Entertainment Weekly criticized its “cloying, gothic preciousness”.
In September 2009, Gosling and Shields had a three-night residency at LA’s Bob Baker Marionette Theater where they performed alongside dancing neon skeletons and glowing ghosts. They then conducted a thirteen-date tour of North America in October 2009, using a local children’s choir at every show. Instead of an opening act, a talent show was held each night. In September 2010, they performed at Los Angeles’ FYF Festival. In 2011, the actor spoke of his intentions to record a second Dead Man’s Bones album. No children’s choir will be featured on the follow-up album because “it’s not very rock ‘n’ roll”.
Personal life
Gosling previously lived in New York City. He co-owns Tagine, a Moroccan restaurant in Beverly Hills, California, which he bought on impulse, spent a year renovating, and now oversees the menu.
He dated his Murder by Numbers co-star Sandra Bullock from 2002 to 2003 and later had a relationship with his The Notebook co-star Rachel McAdams from 2005 to 2007, briefly reuniting in 2008.
Gosling has been in a relationship with his The Place Beyond the Pines co-star Eva Mendes since September 2011. They have two daughters, born in 2014 and 2016. When asked in a 2022 interview if she and Gosling had married, Mendes said that “I like to keep it all mysterious”.
