Ryan Gosling has always been one of Hollywood’s most famous heartthrobs. From The Notebook to Barbie, the 43-year-old actor has become more selective with his film roles. While speaking with WSJ. Magazine for a movie star-esque photo shoot on Thursday, May 2, Ryan noted he doesn’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,” he explained before crediting his partner, Eva Mendes, and their daughters, Esmeralda and Amada. “The decisions I make, I make them with Eva and we make them with our family in mind first.”
Ryan and Eva, 50, first met in 2011 on the set of their movie, The Place Beyond the Pines. They’ve been together since playing love interests on screen. Ryan’s latest movie, The Fall Guy, offered him a similar experience to The Place Beyond the Pines in terms of his characters — both films featured the Canada native playing a stuntman of some sort.
After welcoming his daughters with Eva, Ryan made career decisions based on what benefits them, noting in his interview that La La Land “was the first” of many.
“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,’” the proud dad of two explained. “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.”
Although his family is of the utmost importance to him, Ryan also revealed he wants to participate in more “inclusive” productions rather than just take on projects to “pay the bills.”
“I want to make stuff that’s inclusive and that’s not for an audience of one,” he pointed out. “I think for so long I was just trying to pay the bills and work. It’s only recently that I feel like I realized that I have this opportunity to actually make the kind of films that made me love movies.”
Ryan’s new movie, The Fall Guy, hits theaters on Friday, May 2.
