“I have no shame whatsoever in admitting that I, like, totally want to be Ryan Gosling,” tweeted Lost writer Damon Lindeloff recently. He is not alone. Even the mighty Esquire Magazine seems intimidated by an actor who is too cool for the room.
That’s not to say he thinks he’s cooler than you, it’s more that journalists often seem baffled and bashful when they consider the actor, his career choices, and the way he’s ridden the fame wave and maintained a personality. His career choices speak for themselves — a steady rise to the top, and he’s only just getting started as a leading man. Esquire spent some time with Gosling in New York, and while the experience didn’t follow a Q & A format, Gosling revealed himself enough for writer Tom Chiarrella to attempt some armchair analysis. A few tidbits from the interview below.
Gosling, on being famous: “It’s like being in a dream. You don’t know anybody, but everybody knows you, everybody reacts to you. You can be walking along in a dream, through a pretty normal world, and then bam, everything seems to be a response to your presence. Everything seems to be driven by you. And that’s notable at first, and you deal with it. And then — and it happens every time — you become aware it’s a dream. Right about then, when you think you have it figured, and that acknowledging that will make it easier, it inevitably becomes a nightmare.”
On developing two selves (explains the Esquire photo shoot): “I think I was always bound to become two selves, if I wasn’t already,..Now there’s this me, this public me, and I know that I have become two people. This is what I told the photographer before he took those photographs. Even my own name sounds like just someone I know.”
More on what he has in the works (here, here and here), our interview with him at Cannes for Drive and our look at his other talents.
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