When you think of Ryan Gosling, what comes to mind? A hunk? A meme? An Oscar nominee who has played drug addicts and getaway drivers? “If you’re a bird, I’m a bird”? That one “Are You Afraid of the Dark” episode? Father of Eva Mendes’ child? Cereal?
Somewhere amid that hodgepodge of identities exists one of the biggest movie stars in the country. And also one of the hardest to define. Few men in contemporary Hollywood have garnered a more universal heartthrob status, and that seems, in recent years, to have caused many to think of Great Actor as an inferior bullet point on Ryan Gosling’s résumé.
That’s partly because Gosling, 35, has drifted through the public eye for the better part of two decades, assuming multiple cultural personas and sometimes taking lengthy breaks between projects. “The Big Short,” which opens in limited release on Friday and expands nationwide the week of Christmas, is his first on-screen appearance since summer 2013, when “Only God Forgives” -- Gosling’s most recent collaboration with “Drive” director Nicolas Winding Refn -- stalled at less than $1 million in domestic grosses. “Forgives” was a rare financial misfire for an actor who’s managed to turn even small independent titles into modest hits. Gosling’s rank as Desirable Celebrity didn’t suffer, but all of a sudden it felt like ages since he’d headlined a great film.
“The Notebook” made Gosling a near-instant Movie Star (and object of infatuation) in 2004. It helped, at the time, that he was a known entity, if not quite a household name, thanks to his spot in the well-chronicled Britney Spears era of “The Mickey Mouse Club,” the title role on TV’s “Young Hercules” and a small part in “Remember the Titans.” The 2006-07 triple punch of “Half Nelson” (a raw performance that earned a deserved Oscar nomination), “Fracture” and “Lars and the Real Girl” (cue a Golden Globe nod) quickly cemented Gosling’s Serious Actor bona fides.
But after “Half Nelson” proved Gosling could go dark and “Lars” positioned him as an offbeat indie dude, everything changed. Peter Jackson fired him from “The Lovely Bones” because Gosling thought his character should be overweight, and thus gained 60 pounds before the shoot. He then disappeared from the big screen for three years, instead starting a band. When Gosling returned in 2010, it was with one of his career highlights to date, “Blue Valentine,” an acclaimed performance that generated a ton of Oscar buzz. A moody relationship drama, "Valentine" earned $9.7 million -- notable for a bleak indie that cost $1 million to make, but nowhere near the grosses we associate with modern Movie Stars. And yet, Gosling’s stature rose so rapidly in its wake that, despite how great he is in “Valentine,” Gosling's pop-culture persona shifted from Serious Actor to Cerebral Stud With Pretty Hair and Photoshop-Worthy Abs. The “hey, girl” meme took off, and Gosling did what smart Movie Stars do: He bookended arty roles with well-received mainstream fare. 2011’s “Crazy, Stupid, Love” may be the decade’s most celebrated romantic comedy, while “Drive” and “The Ides of March” each marched to decent reviews and an impressive $75 million at the box office. But Gosling as Sex Symbol had overtaken Gosling as Serious Actor, and 2012’s polarizing “The Place Beyond the Pines” and 2013’s vapid “Gangster Squad” did little to bridge the two images.
So Gosling did something wise: He wrapped a still-unreleased Terrence Malick movie, and then publicly announced he’d be taking some time off. ("I've lost perspective on what I'm doing,” he said, which, to my mind, implies that he, too, was aware that Ryan Gosling, Sex Symbol trumped Ryan Gosling, Serious Actor.) “Time off” became a loose term. He made his directorial debut with the bizarre “Lost River,” a noir-ish thriller so scorched at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival that it almost wasn’t released at all. The movie opened nearly a year later in three theaters, accruing less than $50,000. The defeat went largely unnoticed, however, because right around the same time, he and girlfriend Eva Mendes had their first child, and the tabloids shined favorably upon the handsome couple, who have maintained a semblance of privacy since their relationship began in 2011.
After all these ups, downs and sudden absences, it’s a wonder that Gosling doesn’t need image rehab. But it’s a testament to the lingering popularity of “The Notebook,” the immutable indie cred earned before the Sex Symbol transition and his online popularity that recent misfires haven’t redefined Gosling’s fame. He’s still a tried-and-true Movie Star -- he just needs to remind folks that he rightfully is a Serious Actor, too, because as we well know, the two don’t automatically go hand-in-hand in Hollywood.
With “The Big Short,” directed by frequent Will Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay, Gosling does the best possible thing for his star power: He turns in a humorous performance in an intellectual movie that still manages to be utterly mainstream. Playing a pompous mortgage trader who outlined the housing-market collapse before it ravished the American economy in the late 2000s, Gosling is the movie’s key comic relief and its catalyst. He narrates the film, which is based on Michael Lewis’ 2010 book of the same name, and effectively breaks the fourth wall to explain economic concepts in snarky terms. Oh, and his hair is decidedly un-sexy, as least compared to Gosling’s usual golden locks. Even if it’s not a total transformation, in the scope of how we discuss screen stars, there’s a certain Serious Actor novelty to it.
What, so you don’t think the holidays call for a movie about the unsettling financial crisis? I wasn’t that interested either, but trust me when I say “The Big Short” is one of the year’s best. It’s a slick documentary masked as a rollicking dramatization of moral corrosion. It’s hilarious, and Gosling shares billing with Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt and Melissa Leo, yet still manages to be the movie’s highlight. What more could we want?
Gosling’s perennial Movie Star status was confirmed again when he hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the first time this past weekend. If his one relatability lapse is that Gosling never seems to be having all that much fun, just watch him nail an impersonation of the Scarecrow from “The Wizard of Oz” or try to stifle laughter as Kate McKinnon recounts an alien abduction. Then, like a full-package Movie Star here to elicit swoons, he told Mendes and their new daughter that he loved them during the episode’s closing moments.
“The Big Short” earned a Best Ensemble nomination from the Screen Actors Guild on Wednesday, and 2016’s “The Nice Guys” released a trailer last week that heralds the actor’s comedic talents. Next summer, Gosling will star with Emma Stone in “La La Land,” a musical directed by “Whiplash” maestro Damien Chazelle. And he still has that Malick film floating through the ether, so put a checkmark in the moody-drama category, too.
We always hurt the ones we love, right? Those are the words Gosling used to serenade Michelle Williams in “Blue Valentine,” and they're the words we should use for forgetting that Gosling is a Serious Actor across multiple genres and platforms. If we broke your heart, Ryan Gosling, it’s because we love you most of all.
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Follow Matthew Jacobs on Twitter: @tarantallegra
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