About.com
Published on: 2004

Ryan Gosling’s earned quite a reputation as one of the most promising actors by starring in such heavy dramatic movies as “The Believer,” “The United States of Leland,” and “Murder By Numbers.” Now with his part in “The Notebook,” Gosling tackles something he hasn’t played on screen before – the role of romantic leading man.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve done for love?
I don’t know. I think that maybe it’s this film.

Who were you trying to impress with this?
Oh, I don’t know. My mother.

Had you read the book before shooting this movie? What was the attraction to this role?
I hadn’t read the book. It was so different from anything that I’d done up to that point. The character was very different as well. I felt that it was a very important character for me to play.

What’s the key to keeping a love story fresh?
Well, we weren’t trying to reinvent anything here. I liked the character. I knew that the story was pretty sort of an old fashioned love story, but I thought that he was pretty interesting. I don’t know much about it, and I haven’t seen too many films in this genre. It’s kind of interesting though because my crazy behavior is romantic. Whereas in any other film, if you’ve got a character who wrote three hundred and sixty five letters to a girl that he barely knows - all of them unreturned - and then builds a house for her, and he really doesn’t know her anymore and then essentially pretends that he lives in the house with her, they’re going to lock this guy up in any other movie.

Did you research the 1940s and did having the story set in that era make it easier to play the role?
It made more interesting to play, I think. I don’t think that its because it was the 40s. I think that there’s just something about this genre where it allows for that kind of character. I feel like I’ve played characters with that kind of passion before, but their passion is always repaid with jail time or death. So in this one, he gets the girl and that’s the way that it ought to be, if you ask me.

Did you have to throw logic out the window and play it as a fairy tale?
Yeah. Well, it’s a fairy tale to me. I think that when I’ve heard stories like that, I’ve always kind of thought of them as science fiction, really. But there’s a challenge in trying to find the truth in that. I thought that was interesting for me.

When Rachel McAdams auditioned with you, did you know right away she was the one for the part?
I think that it’s pretty fair to say that we probably wouldn’t have made the film if we hadn’t found Rachel. It was something that was really a stretch for me and I was telling Nick [Cassavetes] that I was really the wrong guy for the movie. And he didn’t seem to think so, and he had a lot of convincing arguments. I said okay. Really, Allie drives the movie. It’s her movie and we’re in it. It all kind of depended on an actress.

Why didn’t you think you were right for the part?
I’m just not like a romantic lead, and I’ve never really done that kind of thing. The whole thing just felt completely like I was the wrong guy for it. But Nick explained to me.

When you auditioned with Rachel, was that the moment you knew it was going to work?
Yeah. I don’t know anything about women and I don’t think that Nick does either. And all of these girls who were coming in, we weren’t making the film, we were just sort of auditioning to see if we could find a girl and all of the girls, some of them were really good, but they all kept asking us what we thought, like, “What do you think I should do? What do you think?” We were like, “I don’t know. The only thing I know about women is that they’re all different. So don’t ask me.” And so Rachel sort of came in at the end and she was the only one who when we asked if she had questions, said no. We said, “Do you know this girl?” She said, “Yeah.” We said, “Do you want to talk about her?” And she said, “No. Lets just do it.” We were like, “Whoa,” and she wiped the tears off of her face and left. We said, “Okay, there’s the movie. The movie is her.”

Did you watch James Garner and Gena Rowlands perform?
I didn’t want to be there too much. I didn’t think that I should be there.

Did you discuss the character with James Garner?
Here’s the thing: I mean, I can’t play a young James Garner. Here’s the difference, when James walks on set, women literally look like they’re on drugs and no work gets done and they’re all laughing a lot and you try to talk to them and they show you their teeth. So he has kind of a thing that I don’t have and I didn’t want to try and play that. So we sort of decided that I’d just be a character in the story as opposed to trying to play a young James.

Do you have a great love in your life?
(Laughing) No.

Do you believe in that kind of movie romance?
It’s not been my experience, to be honest. But maybe. I hear it’s possible.

Did you believe in the relationship between these two characters?
Yeah. More than anything, I thought that I liked the idea of playing a character that was so different from the other characters that I’ve played, who knew what he wanted, and had a kind of sense of clarity about himself and about where he stood. I think that I’ve been playing a lot of confused characters, which I tend to relate to a lot more than someone like this.

Do you think director Nick Cassavetes filtered this film through his parents’ relationship, and did he talk about that at all?
He did, yeah. He was very close to both of them and really in love with their love. So, yeah. Nick is like the main actor in this movie. He wanted to make it. He believed in this. He thinks that it’s real. He’s just very passionate about it and I think that in his experience, he felt that he was around something like this when he grew up.

Did you have to workout for this role?
Yeah. We shot the last part of the film first. It’s no “Raging Bull” or anything, but I tried to put on as much weight as I could just because I had a character who builds a house on his own and survives the fires of war and I thought that he should really appear stronger than he was in the beginning of the film. Then we took a break and I lost some weight.

How did you do it?
Steroids. No. I ate a lot and worked out.

After playing the romantic lead in “The Notebook,” do you feel like you’ve done this so you won’t play this type of role again any time soon?
I think that I’d wait a while. This was something that I really wanted to try and thought that it was important for me to do something like this. I don’t really want to do any one kind of thing. I kind of feel like I want to do as many things that I can for as long as I can. I feel like this was certainly an important experience and now I’ll move on.

How was working with Sam Shepard?
That was a treat.

Do you know all of his plays?
Yes. And I’m a big fan of Sam’s and I think that one of the best performances that I’ve ever seen is Sam in “Days of Heaven.” I actually sort of used that as kind of a model for Noah, the way that Sam was in that film, that kind of quiet strength. So yeah, it was a real treat to get to work with him. He’s just a really great guy. He’s amazing because he’ll be outside working on his golf swing and then he’ll do the scene and he’ll just do the most natural thing. He just forces you to be natural. There’s no acting allowed, really.

What does it take to be an actor?
Acting isn’t that hard, really. I mean, I think that people make a big deal about it, but you just kind of try to say your lines naturally. You try to make them sound like you’re saying them for the first time, but that’s about it. I think that it’s an interesting job. I think that you can sort of have your own personal journey and you know, you can just kind of apply that to whatever characters you’re playing.

What are you confident about?
(Laughing) I don’t know. That’s a big question. I don’t know how to answer that one. I think that Noah is a ‘one’ guy. He’s a person who has one pair of shoes that he likes and one thing that he likes to eat and one friend and one parent and one of everything. And I think that he saw Allie and just decided that she was the one girl that would be in his life. So I think that it all just kind of fit.

Has anyone ever encouraged you when no one else did?
Oh yeah. I’ve got some really great people in my life. I think that I have a great mom who’s always been supportive of me.

No matter what you wanted to do, even act?
Yeah, I don’t know. Acting is tricky because you never know really how long it’s going to last for you and careers are so short, for the most part. So I think that like any mother, she worries about that. But even when I was in school, she took me out of school for a year to teach me. She homeschooled me. I think that that meant a lot to me and she showed me a lot of support. I was like in the fifth grade or something, but wasn’t really cutting it. So she kind of took the time to do that.

When did you know you wanted to be an actor?
I’m still not sure that I want to be an actor. I’m still waiting to get a real job.

What led you to it? Did you study acting?
I didn’t study. I really don’t know why I’m here talking to you, to be honest. It just happened. It’s certainly very nice and I enjoy it, but I don’t know exactly why.

How did it happen?
Well, my sister was a performer, like a singer. So when I was younger, she was doing things like that. I think that I kind of just wanted to be around that or showed some interest in what she was doing. Then I got this television show in Florida, “The Mickey Mouse Club Show.” I wasn’t really on it that much. I just basically road a lot of the rides at Disneyland while they were shooting. But that just kind of happened and really, I’ve just been fortunate. I don’t know.

Did you audition for “The Mickey Mouse Club Show?”
Yeah. Well, my sister had read in the paper that they were auditioning for that in Montreal. I didn’t really play sports or anything so I really wasn’t doing a whole lot. I was just kind of getting into trouble. So I was trying to find something to do and she was too old audition for it. I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll go.” I went and I don’t know how it happened because I can’t sing or dance or act really, but I sort of went in and I ended up getting on somehow.

And this was with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera?
It was.

Do you remember Spears from back then?
I don’t know if I knew her exactly. But she was definitely on the show.

And you’ve got “Stay” coming up. What can you say about that film?
It’s interesting. Mark Forrester directed it. Roberto Schaffer was the DP. It’s extremely visual. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anything like it. Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts are in it. It’s interesting. I don’t really know how to explain it other than it was a really great experience.

Who do you play?
Essentially, this character goes to his therapist and says, “I’m going to kill myself on birthday,” which is in two days. And the therapist is Ewan McGregor and he has a couple of days to try and stop the suicide. But as he gets involved in this kid’s world, his world starts to come apart and he starts to challenge what’s real and what’s not.