When Ryan Gosling’s hero refused to give him an autograph: “It was the worst”
From The All New Mickey Mouse Club to getting an Oscar nomination for playing a Ken doll, it’s been one hell of a journey for Hollywood hero Ryan Gosling, who can do romantic comedies, overly serious dramas, action romps, family adventures, all very well, and you know what, I’ll say he looks great with dyed blonde hair too.
Growing up as an aspiring actor in Canada, Gosling looked to many prominent figures for inspiration, with Gene Kelly serving as an early favourite, as the younger performer admired his combination of grace and strength.
He got to share a set with Burt Reynolds early in his career, which was great until the ageing heartthrob started hitting on his mother; however, there was one other person he looked up to who shattered his dreams into a million pieces, and not because he was trying to bang his mum.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the Ides of March star was asked about which celebrities he would be starstruck by if he met them, and after praising Michael Jordan, he moved on to explaining the pitfalls of coming into contact with an idol.
“Sometimes you meet your heroes, and it’s not great,” he explained, “’The Ultimate Warrior’ was my hero when I was a kid. It’s the first poster I ever had on my wall. I waited for him outside of the arena, and I took my poster, asked him for his autograph. He said ‘Not now kid’,” after which Gosling mimed ripping up his poster in dismay, before adding, “It was the worst.”
As a big wrestling fan myself, I can’t believe I get to write about ‘The Ultimate Warrior’ in an article about Ryan Gosling, yet needs must be met. Jim Hellwig was a professional wrestler who is best known for his run in the WWF (now WWE) as the larger-than-life behemoth with bulging muscles, bright face paint, and a manic speech pattern that made Hulk Hogan sound like Judi Dench. The ‘Warrior’ perfectly embodied the cartoonish image of his era of wrestling and was one of the most popular stars of his day, and true to Gosling’s account, was also a giant asshole.
Hellwig, who legitimately changed his name to ‘Warrior’ in 1993, could be a very difficult man, with one of many stories about his backstage behaviour involving a child from the Make-a-Wish Foundation, wherein he refused to meet the terminally ill boy for some ungodly reason.
Furthermore, his personal problems only intensified as he got older, which saw him leaning more into his conservative politics and infamously delivering a speech to a group of students about how “queering doesn’t make the world work”, turning even more former fans against him.
Thus, when Warrior died in 2014 at just 54, he left behind a complex and uncomfortable legacy, with Gosling just one of many little kids who grew up idolising this real-life superhero to be majorly disappointed when they learned more about him. At least the latter can rest easy knowing that he became a bigger and nicer star than his former favourite ever was.
