The first movie Ryan Gosling saw at the cinema
Ryan Gosling is a man who can do it all. He first found recognition in the mainstream film industry in 2004 for his performance in the romantic drama The Notebook. The realm of rom-coms and dramas would prove a profitable venture for Gosling, who also starred in Crazy, Stupid, Love and La La Land, in which he also exemplified the singing and dancing skills honed in his youth on The Mickey Mouse Show.
However, Gosling is not merely a one-trick pony. He is just as adept behind the wheel of a fast car or at the trigger of a pistol, having also expertly performed in the action films Drive, The Place Beyond the Pines, Only God Forgives, Blade Runner 2049 and the brand new The Gray Man. Perhaps it is unsurprising then to learn that, despite Gosling’s twee singing and dancing role at Disney, he also had an early kinship with action, martial arts and the sacred art of working out.
In conversation with Josh Horowitz, Gosling revealed the first film he ever saw at the cinema: “My first film in a theatre was Bloodsport,” he said. “I was too young to see that film. I was young, but it made an impact, you know. A double impact.”
Bloodsport is a 1988 martial arts film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Frank Dux, a United States Army captain who takes part in an underground martial arts tournament. Frank Dux is a real person, and the screenplay was largely adapted from his writing in Black Belt magazine.
The film features a famous scene in which Van Damme’s character meditates while doing severe splits between two chairs. Van Damme would later refer to the scene in a 2013 Volvo advert. Gosling said that seeing Van Damme perform in Bloodsport inspired a youthful Gosling to start working out but, unfortunately, to little effect.
“My cousin, who I got all my hand-me-downs from, had a splits machine,” Gosling said. “I would try it but to no success. It’s like a homemade splits machine, and it was very Van-Damme inspired, but it was homemade and very scary, and I got stuck in it a few times, and then they had to take it away from me. 12-year-old Ryan, take off the headband; the muscles aren’t gonna come; just chill out.”
However, Van Damme was not Gosling’s favourite action movie star of the 1980s. That was rather Sylvester Stallone. “He’s such a good actor,” Gosling said. “You got action, but you’ve got these amazing characters at the centre of it. It was just like a beautiful marriage. I miss those days.”
