"There's nothing worse than listening to actors talk about acting," says the twenty-two-year-old actor. "It's like magicians talking about their tricks: The trick is always more interesting that anything they have to say about it." Fair enough. Then we'll talk about it for him. Gosling is perhaps the most ferociously talented actor of his generation. In his breakout performance as a Jewish neo-Nazi in The Believer, he managed a frighteningly effective combination of intimidation and empathy, of contorted-face rage and boyish innocence. Gosling followed that with another disturbing performance as a nihilistic, predatory high schooler in Murder by Numbers, which costars Sandra Bullock. Look for him next as Leland in the upcoming The United States of Leland, alongside costars Kevin Spacey and Don Cheadle, due out next year, Gosling talked to us--even about his dreaded "craft."
Esq: In your next film you play a killer. That's three in a row, right? RG: I have to choose my words carefully--I play a confused young man. Esq: But when you're playing the "confused young man," he tends to kill people. RG: Yeah, I guess, but that's just the conflict of the movie. It's not that I necessarily want to play dark people, I just want to be involved with filmmakers that I like and writing that's good, and the dark side is where it seems to be right now. Esq: Speaking of the dark side, you're a former Mouseketeer. Shouldn't you be in a boy band right about now? RG: Oh, no. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't pull it off. I don't got the chops! Even if I had Justin dress me, Britney teach me how to sing, and studied dance grooves every day for the next five years, I still couldn't be a pop star. Esq: Were you concerned that in your first big movie, The Believer, you played such an aggressively controversial character? RG: When I read that script, it moved me. I thought it was a really beautiful story about love, and I didn't know how to reconcile that with the subject matter [about neo-Nazis]. They seemed so different, but to me they were the same. I was just trying to marry the two. That took up every second of my thought process. You can't think about the consequences or if it will offend people; that will affect your choices, and then you're fucked.
