Ryan Gosling just started promoting A Place Beyond the Pines, and I just wanted to discuss this HuffPo interview which I found very interesting. I go back and forth on Gosling – sometimes I find him too cute by half, and I don’t really get hot for “cute”. I get hot for dirty MEN. But Gosling is pretty, and he’s very talented (if he’s given the right material) and I can overlook the Disneyland thing sometimes. Basically, I’m giving him a break… today. Tomorrow, he might be on My List. I actually learned several pieces of new information (new for me) from this HuffPo piece. I heard the rumors that he grew up Mormon, but I didn’t know his divorced parents were “working class Mormons” and that he grew up entirely in Ontario. I also didn’t know his mother homeschooled him! And he calls himself a “mama’s boy” which I already knew without him having to tell me. Here’s more:

He’s taking a break from acting: “I’ve been doing it too much,” he says of acting. “I’ve lost perspective on what I’m doing. I think it’s good for me to take a break and reassess why I’m doing it and how I’m doing it. And I think this is probably a good way to learn about that. I need a break from myself as much as I imagine the audience does.”

His character in A Place Beyond the Pines: “One thing that kind of handed me the key to the character was that I totally overdid it with the tattoos,” says Gosling, who has a teardrop inked beneath his left eye in the film. “I said to Derek, `I got to lose this face tattoo. It’s the worst. It’s so distracting and it’s going to ruin everything.’ And he said, `Well, I’m sure that’s how people with face tattoos feel. So now you have to pay the consequences of your actions.’ So I had to do the whole film with it and now see it on posters. It gave me a sense of shame that I feel was inherent to the character.”

Character acting versus lead acting: “There’s a lot of pressure to be the lead of a film,” he says. “I have done it. It’s not my favorite way to work.”

On The Notebook: “By virtue of being in a movie like that, it just changes people’s perception of you,” he says. “But it doesn’t make it true.”

His acting method: “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says. “I haven’t quite figured out what the balance is between being able to be lost in it – or try to, anyway – and then step outside of it.”

Dating costars: “Working with someone is the best way to get to know someone, especially if it’s a creative endeavor,” says Gosling. “When you work creatively with somebody, it’s very telling and you sort of fast-track with everyone.”

He doesn’t want to be a lead actor: “The more opportunities I’m given, the more I learn about how easy it is to (expletive) it up,” he says. “You fight for freedom and then you get it, and then you have enough rope to hang yourself. It’s like trying to exercise some restraint because I do have so much freedom.”

[From HuffPo]

I agree with him that audiences need a break from him, and it makes me think more of him that he’s self-aware (or audience-aware) enough to acknowledge it. I imagine there are a lot of fancy Hollywood types on his payroll trying to convince him to strike while the iron is hot and that he should be working back-to-back. I like an actor who goes away for a year or two and then comes back for some kind of amazing passion project. I’m also surprised that Ryan is talking so openly about how he doesn’t like lead-actor work. Considering he’s one of the few young actors (young = under 40, for dudes) who is consistently offered lead roles, he must really have to LOOK for character work at this point. He must drive his management team crazy.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.