Ryan Gosling, a Canadian actor, rose to prominence after joining the cast of The Mickey Mouse Club in 1993. As an adult, he acted in the romantic comedy The Notebook (2004) and was nominated for awards for Half Nelson (2006) and Lars and the Real Girl (2007). Among other projects, Gosling has appeared in Blue Valentine (2010), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), The Ides of March (2011), and The Big Short (2015). He was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar for his role as a jazz pianist in the 2016 successful film musical La La Land, and the following year he starred in the popular sci-fi film Blade Runner 2049.
Early Years and Career
Ryan Thomas Gosling was born on November 12, 1980, in London, Ontario, Canada, into a working-class Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints family in the city of Cornwall. One of Sylvester Stallone’s action flicks had an early impression on the future actor: “When I was in first grade I watched First Blood, and I filled my Fisher-Price Houdini kit with steak knives and brought them to school and started throwing them at kids in recess,” Gosling later told Maclean’s magazine.
He was suspended for this reckless reenactment, but the movies he saw continued to motivate him.
Gosling’s first major break came in 1993, when he joined the cast of The Mickey Mouse Club, a children’s variety show. He performed, danced, and acted alongside future stars such as Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera.
“I went through puberty in a theme park,” Gosling explained to Esquire magazine, about the show’s process of filming at Walt Disney World in Florida. “I’m grateful. That place was a landscape to me. I had adventures every day.”
After the show was terminated in 1995, Gosling moved on to other television projects. From 1997 to 1998, he starred in the teen comedy Breaker High before moving on to a more legendary role: at the age of 17, he relocated to Los Angeles to star as the titular character in the popular teen series Young Hercules.
Rising Film Star
Gosling made his feature debut in the sports drama Remember the Titans (2000), alongside Denzel Washington. His first major film break came in 2001 with The Believer. In this critically praised film, he played a Jewish neo-Nazi who received the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
However, it wasn’t until 2004, when he co-starred in the romantic comedy The Notebook with Rachel McAdams, that mainstream audiences sat up and took note. Half Nelson, in which Gosling played the drug-addicted instructor Dan Dunne, gained critical acclaim in 2006. His passionate, heartbreaking performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Always willing to try new things, Gosling starred as a young prosecutor opposite Anthony Hopkins in Fracture (2007). In the eccentric comedy Lars and the Real Girl (2007), he played a meek, delusional man who develops a genuine attachment to a doll. Gosling was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance.
‘Blue Valentine,’ ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’ and ‘Drive’
As his career progressed, Gosling established himself as both a serious actor with a wide range and one of Hollywood’s most beloved sex symbols. He co-starred with Michelle Williams in the 2010 indie film Blue Valentine, which tracked a couple’s downhill slide.
The next year was a watershed moment for the actor. Gosling’s films ranged from romantic comedy to political drama to edgy horror. In Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), he plays a suave ladies’ guy who tries to help a divorced man (Steve Carell) before falling head over heals for a young woman (Emma Stone). He later starred in Drive, about a stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver, in a more action-oriented role. That November, Gosling co-starred in The Ides of March alongside George Clooney, playing a politician’s sharp and shrewd press secretary.
Gosling continued to push himself and refine his skills by co-starring in the criminal drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Eva Mendes and Bradley Cooper, which premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. In Gangster Squad, Gosling reunited with Stone to play a cop out to take on organized criminal figures like Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). The film was supposed to be released in the fall of 2012, but when a shooter opened fire on a crowd inside a Colorado movie theater, it was postponed for modifications and pushed back to January 2013.
‘The Big Short’ and ‘La La Land’
Following his role in the 2013 murder film Only God Forgives, Gosling made his directorial debut with Lost River in 2014. Christina Hendricks plays a distressed single mother in the film, which he also wrote and produced. The next year, he co-starred in The Big Short alongside Christian Bale, Steve Carell, and Brad Pitt. The film, based on Michael Lewis’ nonfiction best-seller, focuses on the housing market bubble that fuelled the 2008 financial catastrophe and a group of men who foretold the turmoil. The film received numerous Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations.
In 2016, Gosling co-starred in the dark comedy The Nice Guys alongside Russell Crowe and also ventured into the musical comedy genre with La La Land, co-starring Stone.La La Land was a huge success, receiving a record-tying 14 Oscar nominations, including Best Actor for Ryan Gosling, and winning six.
Following his appearance in Terrence Malick’s love movie Song to Song in 2017, Gosling returned to more mainstream fare with Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to the 1982 Harrison Ford film. Gosling then portrayed renowned astronaut Neil Armstrong in First Man, a film about NASA’s 1960s attempt to send a man to the moon.
Personal Life and Wife
Gosling has advocated for a variety of humanitarian causes, including AIDS research, poverty relief, and animal welfare. He enjoys boxing and building furniture, something he learned while working on The Notebook. Gosling is a skilled jazz guitarist and singer.
Gosling has been romantically linked to co-stars such as Sandra Bullock and Rachel McAdams throughout the years. He has been romantically related to Place Beyond the Pines co-star Eva Mendes since 2011.
They found out they were expecting their first child in the summer of 2014. Esmeralda Amada Gosling, their daughter, was born that September. Amada Lee, the couple’s second daughter, was born in April 2016. US Weekly alleged in September 2016 that Gosling and Mendes had secretly married earlier that year.