Ryan Gosling

Ryan Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician born on November 12, 1980, in London, Ontario. He began performing as a child after joining Disney Channel's The Mickey Mouse Club in 1993, appearing alongside future stars including Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, and Keri Russell. His early screen work included television series such as Breaker High and Young Hercules, in which he played the title character. Gosling earned major critical attention for playing Danny Balint, a Jewish teenager drawn into neo-Nazi ideology, in the 2001 film The Believer. He then starred opposite Rachel McAdams in Nicholas Sparks adaptation The Notebook (2004), portraying Noah Calhoun, a working-class young man whose romance with Allie Hamilton is told through a frame story involving an elderly couple. The film became a lasting popular success. His subsequent roles often combined emotional intensity with unusual character work. In Half Nelson (2006), he played Dan Dunne, a Brooklyn middle-school teacher struggling with drug addiction; the performance brought him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He received a second Best Actor nomination for La La Land (2016), Damien Chazelle's musical in which he portrayed Sebastian Wilder, a jazz pianist pursuing his dream of opening a traditional jazz club. He performed piano for the role and won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy. Gosling collaborated repeatedly with director Derek Cianfrance, appearing in Blue Valentine (2010), a drama about the collapse of a marriage, and The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), where he played motorcycle stunt rider and bank robber Luke Glanton. He also worked with Nicolas Winding Refn on Drive (2011), playing an unnamed Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver, and Only God Forgives (2013). In 2017, Gosling starred as LAPD officer K in Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 film. K's investigation into a buried secret leads him toward Rick Deckard, played again by Harrison Ford. Gosling also portrayed Neil Armstrong in First Man (2018), another Chazelle film, focusing on Armstrong's years before the Apollo 11 moon landing. In 2023, he played Ken in Greta Gerwig's Barbie, opposite Margot Robbie's Barbie. His comic performance and the song "I'm Just Ken" became central elements of the film's cultural impact. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and performed the song at the 96th Academy Awards. Outside acting, Gosling performed with the rock duo Dead Man's Bones, whose self-titled 2009 album featured a children's choir.