Ryan Gosling: Snapshot

Ryan Gosling: Five Fun Facts

1. The producers of his 2007 film Fracture had a hard time tracking down Ryan Gosling to give him the film's script. At the time, he was living in a tent for two months for reasons he won't disclose.
2. Ryan Gosling's childhood nickname was "Trouble" because he started fights in school. "I'd pick on the toughest guys because the girls liked them," he told the Los Angeles Times. "So if I beat them up the girls would like me. But it never worked."
3. Ryan Gosling had an apprenticeship with a cabinetmaker for his carpentry scenes in The Notebook. "We made all the Adirondack chairs in front of the house," he told PEOPLE. "And we shot a scene where Rachel and I consummate our relationship on a table I made."
4. Ryan Gosling's dream project is a remake of the 1953 Audrey Hepburn romantic comedy Roman Holiday. But he'd only do it with Natalie Portman. "I love that film, and she's the only person who could do it. She's like water, that girl. She moves through everything untouched," he told Entertainment Weekly.
5. When he's not making movies, Ryan Gosling writes music and plays guitar as part of a duo with Rachel McAdam's sister's on-and-off boyfriend. In 2007, they went to Israel to record with local musicians.

Ryan Gosling: Biography

1993

Mouseketeering With Future Pop Stars

Aspiring Canadian actor Ryan Gosling auditions at an open call in Montreal for the revival of Disney's The Mickey Mouse Club. He wins a two-year spot, moves to Orlando, and dances backup for Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake (left). "Christina had the same voice then as she does now. Nothing I was doing was on that level," he recalls to Entertainment Weekly. "But I had the greatest two years ever. I walked around...riding Space Mountain and puking my brains out. It was awesome." When the show is cancelled, he returns home to Ontario.

1998

Young Hercules

At 17, Gosling drops out of school and moves to L.A. He quickly lands an agent and the title role of the short-lived Fox series Young Hercules (right). "Initially, I did the series because it was fun," he tells the Vancouver Sun in 2002. "But then I started to care too much about it, and it wasn't fun any more...I wanted to do films, have more time to sit with a character and to try to play different characters. So I just said, 'No more television.'"

2001

May 17

Titans & The Believer

After making his feature debut with Denzel Washington and Hayden Panettiere in Disney's Remember the Titans, Gosling earns critical praise for portraying a Jewish neo-Nazi leader in The Believer (left). The film wins the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, yet is barely distributed in theaters because of its violent nature. "Things changed for me," he tells the New York Times. "I felt I had a place I could put the things I had inside of me into."

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Ryan Gosling: Special Feature