How an insult turned Ryan Gosling into a star: “You’re not handsome, you’re not cool”
If you’ve ever spent any time on social media (not recommended), then you may well have noticed or partaken in the strange phenomenon that a lot of folk indulge in, which is to pay very good-looking celebrities endless compliments about how good-looking they are, as though they need that affirmation somehow.
It’s the kind of comment people might leave under a photo of Ryan Gosling, for instance, although refreshingly, not everyone treats him that way.
Gosling is, of course, ludicrously attractive, but also has the temerity to seem like a decent fellow who is comparatively down to earth and nice to everyone, which makes it annoyingly difficult to dislike him. He’s also now moving into the realm of the likes of Brad Pitt and Matt Damon in being an A-lister who can carry enormous movies single-handed, as his showing in this year’s brilliant sci-fi Project Hail Mary proved, and it’s why he’s been handed the next really big Star Wars spin-off, 2027’s Starfighter.
So it would make sense if people were lining up to pay him compliments, but way back in the day, as he was preparing to make what would become a classic weepy, 2004’s The Notebook with Rachel McAdams, he was brought down a peg by the man behind the camera.
Gosling told the Huffington Post, “Nick Cassavetes called me to meet him at his house. When I got there, he was standing in his backyard, and he looked at me and said, ‘I want you to play this role because you’re not like the other young actors out there in Hollywood. You’re not handsome, you’re not cool, you’re just a regular guy who looks a bit nuts’.”
Which is harsh on anyone, let’s face it, let alone someone who at that point was only 23 and hadn’t had his big movie breakthrough yet. Cassavetes perhaps got some of his fearlessness from his dad, John, one of the most inventive and important directors in cinema, the man behind movies like the jaw-dropping A Woman Under the Influence from 1974, starring his future wife Gena Rowlands.
And it was Rowlands who would line up in The Notebook with Gosling, although they didn’t share scenes due to the fact that they were playing characters in very different stages of life. Together with Rowlands, screen legend James Garner played the older version of Gosling’s character, reading to her as she suffers from dementia and reminds her of the love they once shared in youth.
Opposite Gosling in the film was McAdams, who the younger Cassavetes cast due to her immediate chemistry in the auditions, beating out other talent like Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Lawrence and Scarlett Johansson to the role. Gosling, meanwhile, was cast ahead of Hayden Christensen, who was flying high after landing the role of Anakin Skywalker in George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels.
When The Notebook was released, it was not a particular hit with the critics, and that remains the case, but audiences loved it and increasingly so. It made four times its budget of $30million at the box office and has become a cult classic for anyone, usually groups of women sipping hot chocolate on a sofa, who fancy bawling their eyes out for two hours in their pyjamas.
