Ryan Gosling has made a successful career where he played a wide variety of roles over the years. But if you’re a fan of Gosling more when he plays lighter roles, as he did in Barbie and his new film, The Fall Guy, you’re in luck. It sounds like upcoming Ryan Gosling movies will include more roles like those.
Speaking with The Wall Street Journal Gosling says that he doesn’t really take roles that put him in a dark place. He says he makes his decisions based on what is best for his family, and it sounds like playing darker roles may hurt the way he interacts with his wife and children, and that’s something he wants to avoid. Gosling explained…
I don’t really take roles that are going to put me in some kind of dark place. This moment is what I feel like trying to read the room at home and feel like what is going to be best for all of us. The decisions I make, I make them with Eva and we make them with our family in mind first.
Some of the best Ryan Gosling movies have certainly had him playing roles that could conceivably have put him in a “dark place” before. His role as the getaway driver in Drive or even as a man experiencing his marriage fall apart in Blue Valentine are some of the most memorable Ryan Gosling characters, but it wouldn’t be hard to see how playing them could have taken an emotional toll if they were still on his mind while spending time with his loved ones.
Gosling says this change in the way he chooses roles was a relatively recent decision, it was when he played the young musician falling in love in La La Land that he realized that the role fit with the way his family was working at the time. Gosling and wife Eva Mendes keep their private life private, which shows just how important their family is to them. This process of work and family working together continued with Barbie. Gosling went on…
I think ‘La La Land’ was the first. It was just sort of like, ‘Oh, this will be fun for them, too, because even though they’re not coming to set, we’re practicing piano every day or we’re dancing or we’re singing.’ Their interest in ‘Barbie’ and their disinterest in Ken was an inspiration. I thought, they were already making little movies about their Barbies on the iPad when it happened, so the fact that I was going off to work to make one too, we just felt like we were aligned.
Ryan Gosling has still played serious, dramatic roles since La La Land so his need to stay out of a “dark place” doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll only be taking roles in comedies. As his kids get older and his family evolves, it will likely also impact the roles that he takes. What is clear is that Gosling’s decisions for work will come from whatever works best for his family, and I don’t think anybody can blame him for that.
But for those of us who love a funnier Gosling, like the character he plays in The Fall Guy cast, this is great news. Maybe The Nice Guys sequel that we all deserve will finally happen if Gosling is specifically looking for that sort of role.
