::Private Ryan: Ryan Gosling tries hard not to be the typical young actor, but success has found him anyway
A gosling is a gawky young goose, and Ryan Gosling is an odd bird indeed among his generation of twentysomething actors. He's a rawboned fellow with a tortured air who lives in a bad neighborhood in downtown L.A., as far as possible from the fashionable Hollywood Hills. He avoids trendy hot spots like the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel; going out, says the 25-year-old, "is a younger man's game." And he broods, in his laconic way, over such knotty questions as the state of masculinity in a postfeminist world where metrosexual dandies in pretty clothes embody the masculine ideal.
"We're men, you know?" says the actor, who sports an old flannel shirt and a five-day beard. "A lot of us don't wear this stuff. We're simple."
Gosling is halfway through a plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes at a local diner. He's pondering manhood after a photo shoot to promote his latest film, the moody psychological thriller Stay, in which he plays a depressed student who may or may not have died in the film's opening scene.
Gosling worries that slick photographs of male actors are not only deceitful but also potentially emasculating. "It's like being castrated," Gosling says, referring to the smooth-chested image of male sexuality. "We've got to take our balls back. I don't mean it in a chauvinistic way That's what we are. We're men. Somewhere along the line we were made to feel bad about that."
Heavy stuff from a former Mouseketeer who, during his stint on the Mickey Mouse Club, roomed with castmate Justin Timberlake. But there's no doubting Gosling's sincerity. He's a type often found on liberal arts campuses: the sensitive outsider with big questions who doesn't feel quite at ease among his more urbane contemporaries.
"Ryan is very real," says Stay director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland). "He's not trying to pretend he's someone else. A lot of young actors buy into the whole lifestyle of the Hollywood dream. Ryan keeps asking questions."
And Gosling isn't afraid to bite--or at least snap at--the hand that feeds him. "There's very little original material," he says when asked about scripts he's read since starring in 2004's The Notebook. "I didn't make a movie for a year and a half. I read every day, but there's just nothing out there."
Gosling has been in the entertainment business since he was 12, when he and his sister turned out for a Disney casting call in his hometown of London, Ontario. The son of divorced parents, he says he started working to make some "dough" after his father left the family in a financial lurch. At 18, he scored his first movie role in Remember the Titans, a feel-good study of racial politics and high school football, and moved to L.A. soon after. His subsequent performance as a serf-hating neo-Nazi Jew in The Believer won him actorly credibility, while the $80 million success of The Notebook solidified his fan base among devotees of two-hankie weepies.
"My mom would love to see me do more Notebooks," says Gosling. "She's concerned that the movies I do are so serious. She's a mom. She worries about her kid." Gosling himself makes no apologies for the sappy retelling of Nicholas Sparks's deep-purple love story. "I loved doing that film," he says. "I'm an actor, so it's all about character, and I thought this character was a guy I could respect. I like the way he just wanted to be with this girl."
Celebrity has brought some unexpected consequences, as Gosling recounts in a funny post-Notebook story. Earlier this year, he was pulled over in Beverly Hills on suspicion of drunk driving. As the officer put him in the police cruiser, he asked if Gosling was in The Notebook. When he replied honestly, the cop gave him a stern look and said, "My wife says the book was better," then took him to the station for booking.
Gosling says, with a spark of fun, that he loved the interchange. "I was like, 'Are you arresting me because you didn't like the movie?'" he recalls. "I said, 'That's awesome. You should arrest everybody in this town whose movies you don't like.'" (The charges were later dropped.)
Stay is not likely to appeal to Gosling's Notebook fans. The film, which costars Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, blurs lines between past and present, life and death. But Gosling doesn't mind if Stay is hard to figure out. He chose it precisely because of its elusive quality.
Gosling's latest effort is a $700,000 indie, Half Nelson, in which he plays a teacher in a tough Brooklyn high school. (The actor walked to the location shoot daily and made fake lesson plans for his students.) Next, he's slated to appear opposite Javier Bardem and Robin Wright Penn in The Last Face. But, oddly, Gosling says he's happy when he hasn't been cast for a part. Preparing for a role is so exhausting that he'd rather let someone else do the work
"It's just easier," Gosling says. "Then I can go see the movie and enjoy it like everyone else."
