Monday, October 15, 2007

Ryan Gosling on 'Lars and the Real Girl'

Ryan Gosling on 'Lars and the Real Girl'Memo to Gene Wilder: If you are reading this, contact Ryan Gosling. The 26-year-old Canadian actor nominated this year for his haunting turn as a strung-out schoolteacher in "Half Nelson" really wants to work with you. His dream, he says, is "just to work with (Wilder) in any way."

Wilder's name comes up, along with James Stewart's, at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Gosling is supporting his latest movie, "Lars and the Real Girl," which opens Friday. In it, he plays the title character, a withdrawn and socially awkward young man, fearful of human interaction and yet craving it, who orders an anatomically correct sex doll over the Internet and introduces her to everyone as his new girlfriend, Bianca. That may sound like the premise of a dirty joke, but as the tiny, snowbound town heeds a doctor's advice to humor Lars' delusion and welcomes Bianca into their community, the drama that develops is the farthest thing from that.

"It's like 'The Velveteen Rabbit' or something," Gosling observes. "It kind of reminded me of 'Harvey,' too, which was one of my favorite films as a kid. When I read it, I thought, 'Oh, that's 'Harvey.' "

But while the story brought to mind James Stewart and one of his signature roles, that of Elwood P. Dowd, the small-town drunk who pals around with an 8-foot-tall invisible rabbit, there was only one living person that Gosling thought could do Lars justice - and his name was not Ryan Gosling.

"Gene Wilder is like my Marlon Brando. I just think that he completely redefined acting for me," Gosling says, noting that one of his favorite Wilder movies is Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex," in which Wilder's character, like Lars, finds love with an inappropriate partner.

"When I read (the script), the whole time I was reading it, I thought, 'I wish Gene Wilder could do this.' I just thought that this was something only he could do and obviously he wasn't going to do it, so it was mine, my attempt at something in the vicinity of what he would do. In trying to, I might have failed horribly, but if you're going to idolize somebody, I think he's the guy."

It was not hard for Gosling to burrow inside the character, feeling a kinship with him that leaped off the pages of "Six Feet Under" scribe Nancy Oliver's screenplay. "I identify with Lars more than with any other character I've ever played," he confesses. "I feel that awkward, too. I feel a separation between who I think I am, who I actually am and how I'm perceived to be. It's hard to truly connect with people. He wants to connect, but he doesn't feel that he has the tools to do it. I don't think it's just me. I think there's a little bit of Lars in all of us."

Paul Schneider, who plays Lars' brother Gus, would reduce him to helpless laughter with his improvisations, ruining takes. ("He knows that he could be less funny to help you, but once he's got you, he'll push it," Gosling says. "He'll put you on the ropes.") The actor had no such difficulties with Bianca, whom he found to be a generous collaborator.

"I found it quite relaxing in the end to work on scenes with her, because she has a very calming presence," he says. "We formed a bond, in a weird way, because it was just her and I. When they said, 'Action!' - it was just the two of us. I bonded to her and I would kind of cling to her for moral support in scenes."

Next up for Gosling is the role of the grieving, vengeful father in Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's best-seller "The Lovely Bones." After that, he hopes to direct his first feature, on location in Africa. Moved by a visit to Chad, where he shot documentary footage of Darfur refugee camps, he is developing a drama about child soldiers in northern Uganda, called "The Lord's Resistance."

"Making movies is all I know how to do," he says. "I've been doing this since I was a kid. The only way that I can really collaborate with anybody is with film."

Perhaps surprisingly for someone who has forged such a serious career with an emphasis on high-quality projects, Gosling did not always look at it this way. He began training as a dancer as a child, mainly as a way to get out of school, and caught his first break at 13 in 1993 when, along with Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Keri Russell, he became a Mouseketeer on "The Mickey Mouse Club." He turned to acting when he realized that it offered a more promising career path than dancing, and he took whatever job came his way. He was miserable.

"When I was a kid, nobody in my family did what they loved to do for a living. It didn't even occur to me that you could, so I never thought of it that way," he says.

He credits his mother and writer-director Henry Bean for changing the course of his career. It was his mom who suggested that he quit taking jobs for money, since he was so unhappy, and concentrate on finding something that would give him satisfaction.

He started looking more closely at scripts, and when a friend was auditioning for Bean's "The Believer," a stunning character portrait of a neo-Nazi skinhead who is actually Jewish, he realized that the role was something he could do. He got the part, garnered an Independent Spirit Award nomination (he won the award this year for "Half Nelson") and changed the course of his career.

"Acting was a job, and then I did 'The Believer' and it was not a job at that point," he says. "I would have done it for free. I never had that feeling before. (Henry Bean) gift wrapped me a career. I don't know where I would be if it wasn't for that film."

He knows where he is now. He is grateful for the career that he has been able to build and for opportunities like "Lars and the Real Girl," even if he felt a lot of pressure making the movie, much of it self-imposed. "It's the kind of script that you dream about as an actor," he says. "You read so much stuff that's so recycled and you break your neck trying to find something in it. Then there's this; it's marinating in originality. All you can do is try to live up to its expectations."


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