Ryan Gosling’s Troubled Childhood Is Nothing Like His Good Guy Image Today
From The Notebook’s Noah to Barbie’s Ken, Ryan Gosling has scored plenty of heartthrob roles across his career, cultivating an all-round “good guy” image. But his childhood paints a very different picture. The Hollywood favorite endured some challenging times back then, ones which could’ve easily derailed his path to stardom. And Gosling hasn’t been afraid to shed light on his past as the years have gone on.
An incredible rise
Few stars have enjoyed a rise up the Hollywood ranks in quite the way Gosling has over the last 20 years. It’s been impressive to say the least! His great performance in The Notebook kicked it all off back in 2004.
Mind you, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the actor got his start in the entertainment industry long before then. Gosling had just been a kid when he first stepped in front of a camera.
The Mickey Mouse Club years
Yep, in 1993 Gosling joined the talented cast of The Mickey Mouse Club, bagging a spot following a successful audition in Montreal, Canada. And boy, did that show boast quite the line-up!
Future superstars such as Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, and Britney Spears were all part of it. Gosling subsequently moved down to Florida from his home in Ontario, Canada, for the shoot.
“They stopped using me”
Unfortunately for Gosling, though, that period wasn’t without its headaches. As he recalled in 2011 to The Daily Telegraph, “Most of the other [cast members] went to this apartment complex, but it was too expensive for my mother and me, so we lived in this trailer park.”
“Although as it became clear to the producers that I wasn’t nearly as talented as some of the other kids — I couldn’t sing or dance like they could — they stopped using me in the show so much.”
A bodyblow
Gosling elaborated on that during a different chat with Interview magazine in 2010. The actor said, “It was kind of depressing. I remember one time they put four of us in a dance routine, but I was so off.”
“I was on the end, so they just pushed the shot in closer on the other three guys to frame me out.” That’d be a gut-punch for anyone, let alone a kid!
“Disheartening”
“I would just come in at the beginning of the show and then come back at the end, and occasionally I’d have a sketch here or there,” Gosling continued. “But I didn’t end up working that much, which was disheartening.”
Yet his time on The Mickey Mouse Club wasn’t all bad. In addition to the on-screen experience he picked up, Gosling got the chance to explore Florida’s most famous theme park.
Time well spent?
Gosling noted, “I had a lot of free time, which I ended up spending in the Disney World park itself. It was interesting as a kid to go backstage to the commissary, and to see all of the people who were playing the characters with their heads off next to them while they were eating lunch.”
Those spells around the park also sparked something inside the future star. His determination to go down the performing path only grew stronger, despite the lack of screen-time on the show.
“I knew I saw my future”
“It made a huge impact on me, the park,” Gosling later admitted to The Daily Telegraph. “I rode the Haunted Mansion ride and saw destiny staring me straight in the face.”
“When you come around the corner on the dune buggy and all the ghosts are dancing in the ballroom, I knew I saw my future. Whenever I wasn’t involved in the show, I’d just go and ride that ride. It’s such an interesting place.”
A temporary guardian
Meanwhile, there was a significant shift in Gosling’s personal life as his time in Florida continued. His former Mickey Mouse Club co-star Timberlake went into more detail during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
The singer said, “His mother had to keep her job in Canada [during] the second year we were on the television show. And my mom [became] his guardian for like six months, so we actually lived together.”
Mischievous duo
“We were probably a little closer than the rest of the kids that were on the show, just because we had to share a bathroom!” Timberlake joked. So what did the pair get up to as roomies, then?
Well, according to Timberlake, they were fairly mischievous. “We used to do terrible things,” he said tongue-in-cheek. “We thought we were so cool when we were on The Mickey Mouse Club.”
“Totally illegal”
Timberlake continued, “We stole a golf cart. We were like, ‘Yeah man, we’re stealing a golf cart!’ But meanwhile you know what it’s like on a backlot: there’s golf carts everywhere.”
“So we ‘stole’ the golf cart and then drove into MGM Studios, which is totally illegal.” But while this was all said in jest, Gosling was no stranger to real trouble at that point in his life.
“You were raised by a religious zealot”
Before packing his bags for Florida, Gosling had spent his formative years in London, Ontario, with his folks. The Notebook star lived in a Mormon household, which he shed some light on while chatting with The Guardian in 2007.
Gosling said, “We were brought up pretty religious. My mother admits it: she says, ‘You were raised by a religious zealot.’ She’s different now, but at the time, it was a part of everything — what they ate, how they thought.”
Signs of trouble
As for Gosling’s attitude during that period, he’s admitted that he had behavioral issues. There had been signs of trouble going all the way back to when he was just a toddler.
Speaking to Buzz in 2017 Gosling remembered, “From as early as two years old I was sneaking out the house never wearing my clothes, breaking things, putting the cat in the dryer, and setting the house on fire.”
A terrifying near miss
And the shenanigans didn’t end there, either. While talking to The Times, Gosling revealed that he had once sat behind the wheel of his family’s car when he was only five years old!
He then proceeded to reverse the vehicle directly in front of an oncoming driver. Our palms are getting sweaty just thinking about it! Gosling endured some other near misses in that spell, too.
“I wanted to be where the cars were”
“I also stood in the middle of the street trying to get hit by cars, not because I wanted to die but I wanted to be where the cars were,” Gosling explained to the newspaper.
On top of that, there were additional issues simmering in the background. And strangely enough, Gosling uncovered his acting dream thanks in part to those problems as a young kid.
“My only friend”
“I was a lonely child, I didn’t do well at school and TV was my only friend,” Gosling told Company in 2011. “Then, one day, I saw Raquel Welch on The Muppet Show. She was dancing with this big furry spider and I immediately fell in love.”
“She was the first crush I ever had, and I thought, ‘How do I get to meet this woman?’ And then I thought, ‘Well, she’s on TV, so to meet her I have to get on TV myself.’”
A shocking act
But before he got that chance on The Mickey Mouse Club, Gosling did something that threatened to completely derail his childhood ambitions. He got pretty candid about it during his chat with Company.
The Nice Guys star recalled, “I wanted to be Billy Idol for a long time. I also wanted to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I really wanted to be Sylvester Stallone.”
“I was suspended”
“When I first saw Rambo, that movie put a kind of spell on me and I actually thought I WAS Rambo,” Gosling continued. “So much so that one day, I took a bunch of steak knives to school and threw them around at recess time.”
“Because I thought we were in the movie! I’m not proud of this but I did learn a lesson. I was suspended from school [and] my mother said I couldn’t watch R-rated movies anymore.”
“I was Rambo taking them to war”
Gosling was only a first-grader when that incident went down at the school, so he would’ve been between six and seven years old. It was a shocking episode for his teachers to say the least!
The actor went into further detail in a separate chat with Paper in July 2018. He added, “I wasn’t taking [the knives] to school, I was Rambo taking them to war.”
A telling diagnosis
In the aftermath of what went down that day, Gosling and his folks started to get some answers as to why his behavior was proving so problematic. It turned out that he had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, better known as ADHD.
Once he had been diagnosed, Gosling was handed a Ritalin prescription and found himself in a special-needs class back at school. But he didn’t stay in that classroom for too long.
The home-schooling period
When he was ten years old, Gosling was taken out of elementary school by his mom so he could be home-schooled instead. She taught him for around 12 months, during which time he also started to watch more films.
It subsequently strengthened his desire to pursue a potential role in the world of showbiz, avoiding the career path taken by his dad. “[It gave me] a sense of autonomy that I've never really lost,” Gosling told The Guardian.
“I hated being a kid”
“I didn’t want to work in a paper mill, and I wasn’t going to stay in school,” Gosling continued. “I hated being a kid. I didn’t like being told what to do.”
“I didn’t like my body, I didn’t like any of it. Being a kid and playing and all that stuff just drove me nuts.” There was also the issue that he didn’t have anyone his own age with whom he could hang out.
The turning-point
As Gosling said in a later interview with The Guardian in 2015, “I didn’t really have friends back then. It was a tight little family unit. We rolled with each other.”
Yet everything changed for him when he attended The Mickey Mouse Club audition at the age of 12. Despite all the issues he’d faced in the previous years, Gosling stood out from the other 15,000 kids and bagged himself a job.
Getting to work
When the show ended in 1995 Gosling left Florida and went back to Canada, earning some more TV work. The actor scored parts in the likes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Goosebumps.
From there, he packed his bags for Los Angeles as a 16-year-old and continued to gain valuable experience on the small screen in California. It was an exciting time, and things soon got even better.
Making the jump to movies
In 1997 Gosling bagged one of the main roles on the show Breaker High, appearing in over 40 episodes. Then, he was cast as the lead in Young Hercules the following year.
After that, Gosling went on to prove that he was just as capable on the big screen as well. He featured in five movies between 2000 and 2003, which included a part in Remember the Titans.
The impact of The Notebook
But as we mentioned earlier, it was The Notebook that really strapped a rocket to Gosling’s career. Looking back on the casting process, he had some interesting things to say about why he was chosen.
Gosling told Company, “The director [of The Notebook], 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.”
“A regular guy who looks a bit nuts”
Gosling added, “[Cassavetes] 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.’”
Following The Notebook, in 2007 he soon bagged his first Oscar nod, ahead of starring in the likes of Blue Valentine and Drive. Yet, it could be argued that 2012’s The Place Beyond the Pines might be the most important job Gosling got during that period.
Finding love
After all, Gosling met his future wife Eva Mendes on that set! The famous pair have gone on to have two children together since becoming a couple at the back end of 2011.
They’re intensely private, but Mendes appeared to confirm that she and Gosling did eventually get married in 2022. Their relationship is a complete contrast to a lot of Hollywood romances!
More success
Going back to Gosling’s career, he earned his second Oscar nomination for La La Land in 2017 and then starred in three more big movies after that. Blade Runner 2049, First Man, and The Gray Man all show different aspects of his talents as a performer.
And most recently, Gosling showed another side of himself in the hugely successful Barbie. His portrayal of Ken is one to remember in a film that grossed over $1.4 billion at the global box office.
Third time lucky?
Speaking of Barbie, Gosling bagged his third Oscar nod ahead of the 2024 ceremony thanks to his performance in the movie. Could it be third time lucky for the Hollywood star?
One thing is for sure, though. After everything he’s gone through across his life and acting career, it’s safe to say that Gosling’s “bad boy” personality is firmly behind him.