“Hell of a lot more romantic than that”: the 2004 movie that gave Ryan Gosling “the great love of my life”
Ryan Gosling didn’t want to settle for anything less than perfect whenever he worked on a movie.
He has made a name for himself as one of the greatest actors of his time, and while he never needed to take himself all that seriously every time he made a new project, he knew that he was going to deliver the same kind of quality that he always did whenever working on whatever new blockbuster he had coming out. But there are some connections that he held onto in films long after the cameras stopped rolling.
At the same time, no one really has the same kind of massive appeal that Gosling has without being in a major franchise. Some of the biggest names have tied themselves to brand-style movies with multiple sequels, but the reason why Gosling feels like a true one-off is because of how versatile his movies can be. He can do La La Land, but he could also turn right around and do something like Drive at the same time as well.
And there are even a few pieces of his career that are criminally under the radar as well. Project Hail Mary might still get lifted up as one of the greatest films that he’s ever made years down the road, but the fact that something like The Nice Guys managed to go by unnoticed is one of the greatest injustices of his career. He had a lot more inside of him, but things would always go back to the way they were when he was just a kid, fresh out of Mickey Mouse Club.
It might be hard to shake that kind of stigma, but when you look at the way that he moved directly afterwards, he was trying to scrub pieces of that from his DNA. He didn’t need to be the wholesome character in every single movie, but whereas most people would forget his minor roles in movies like Remember the Titans, a silhouette of him out in the rain with Rachel McAdams is still one of the greatest visuals in 2000s cinema.
The Notebook didn’t necessarily need to be one of the greatest cinematic experiences ever captured onscreen, but the way that everything falls into place in that movie is exactly what you need for a romance movie. In fact, maybe the reason why it worked so much was because of how much Gosling wasn’t really a fan of what McAdams was doing, just like his character in the film.
And since the duo ended up dating shortly after the movie wrapped, it did feel like life imitating art when Gosling talked about his relationship with McAdams, saying, “I mean, God bless The Notebook, it introduced me to one of the great loves of my life… But people do Rachel and me a disservice by assuming we were anything like the people in that movie. Rachel and my love story is a hell of a lot more romantic than that.”
The relationship might not have lasted as long as it could have, but even if they were cordial with each other by the end, Gosling remembered the whole thing being a grieving process for the fans more than anything. Everyone seemed to be rooting for them, but whenever he saw fans on the street for a few months following the breakup, he almost needed to console them on his behalf half the time they saw him.
But that’s really a testament to the kind of performance that he gave. The parasocial angle of celebrity culture has been alive and well ever since the days of Beatlemania, but that kind of intense reaction should really be a compliment to the kind of performance that Gosling gave in every single scene.
