Ryan Gosling - Profile

So any Steemers a fan of the very talented Ryan Gosling? Let me properly introduce you to him and his countless achievements.

He is a Canadian actor who was born on November 12th 1980. He was brought up in Cornwall, Ontario in Canada and raised in a working class Mormon family. His father is a travelling salesman for a paper company and his mother qualified as a teacher in 2011. Gosling received his education at three schools: Gladstone Public School, Cornwall Collegiate and Vocational School and then went on to Lester B. Pearson High School. He did not enjoy school at first and was bullied in his elementary school, but by the time he was fifteen he started to make friends. As a child he was inspired by the film Dick Tracey and it seemed that the actor Sylvester Stallone was a big influence on Gosling, he said in McLeans magazine that, ‘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’. He was actually suspended from school for this but movies continued to be an inspiration to him.

He first had a lucky career break in 1993 when he appeared in the American variety show The Mickey Mouse Club. In the programme he was joined by future stars such as Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Christine Aguilera where he both danced and acted. In relation to the years he spent on the show Gosling told Esquire magazine that ‘I went through puberty in a theme park. He went on, ‘I'm grateful. That place was a landscape to me. I had adventures every day’. In 1995 the show was cancelled and Gosling then went on to work on another television programme between 1995-1998 entitled Breaker High. Once he had turned seventeen Gosling moved to Los Angeles where he played the lead role in the mythical teen series Young Hercules.

(Ryan Gosling in the Mickey Mouse Club, 1993)

His film debut came when he appeared in a small supporting role alongside Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans (2000). However, it was only a year later when he would get a more central film role in The Believer, where he played a Jewish neo-Nazi, the film was critically acclaimed and won the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury award. It was in 2004 when he first starred in a Hollywood blockbuster, a romantic film called The Notebook, it was his performance in this film where mainstream audiences began to take more notice of him. However, Gosling has become synonymous with adopting diverse roles and has gone on to become more involved in the independent filmmaking scene. He has constructed a reputation playing unconventional and mis-fit roles in independent films including Murder By Numbers (2002), The United States of Leland (2003), The Ides of March (2011) and The Place Beyond The Pines (2012).

(The Place Beyond The Pines, 2013)

It is the unique performances he brings to his roles that carves this actor out as something different, something believable, something sincere and someone people can warm to. Gosling’s performances have paid off, he has been nominated for numerous awards. His role as a teacher addicted to drugs in Half Nelson (2006) earned him a nomination for an Academy Award and he received another nomination for a Golden Globe Award for his performance as a socially inept man in the comedy-drama Lars and the Real Girl (2007). Three years later he returned to the screen with the romantic drama Blue Valentine (2010) and this earned him a second Golden Globe nomination. However, it has not all been triumph for his acting efforts. In 2005 he starred alongside Ewan McGregor in a film called Stay in which he played a psychologically disturbed student. The film did not receive positive reviews and The New York Times wrote that Gosling ‘like his fans, deserves better’.

However, it was 2012 that proved to be Gosling’s most diverse year yet. He starred in three films that were all very different from one another, the films ranged from romantic comedy to political thriller and edgy drama. In Crazy, Stupid, Love he is the smooth ladies man, in Gangster Squad he’s the upholder of the law fighting organized crime and he tests himself further in The Place Beyond the Pines in which he plays a bank robber. Over the years Gosling has embraced a multitude of diverse and challenging roles and it he has achieved a very unique and astounding success balancing performances in both mainstream and independent films.