Ryan Gosling Explains Why He's Avoiding Roles That Take Him To A 'Dark Place'

When choosing future roles, The Fall Guy star Ryan Gosling said his family plays an important part in decision making.

Gosling, 43, has played a range of characters throughout his Hollywood career, including Just Ken in Barbie (2023), a song and dance romantic lead in La La Land (2016), an officer in the sci-fi action thriller Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and a manipulative killer in Murder By Numbers (2002).

These days, the three-time Academy Award nominee wants to avoid playing characters that might be psychologically more intense.

Speaking to WSJ. Magazine, Gosling said:

"I don't really take roles that are going to put me in some kind of dark place."

Gosling and his The Place Beyond the Pines co-star Eva Mendes have been romantically linked since September 2011.

They share two daughters, Esmeralda Amada, 9, and Amada Lee, 7.

He explained:

"This moment is what I feel like trying to read the room at home and feel like what is going to be best for all of us."

"The decisions I make, I make them with Eva and we make them with our family in mind first."

Fans admired him more for his prioritizing family.

Gosling explained when his pivot towards lighter movie roles started to manifest.

"I think La La Land was the first," he said, adding:

"It was just sort of like, Oh, this will be fun for them, too, because even though they're not coming to set, we're practicing piano every day or we're dancing or we're singing."

"Their interest in Barbie and their disinterest in Ken was an inspiration."

"I thought, they were already making little movies about their Barbies on the iPad when it happened, so the fact that I was going off to work to make one too, we just felt like we were aligned."

Gosling's "family-first" mentality is mutually shared by Mendes.

She previously opened up about a "non-verbal agreement" she and Gosling have when it comes to navigating parenthood together.

In March, the 50-year-old divulged on the Today show that she retired from acting to be a full-time mom and called the arrangement “a no-brainer."

The creative director of the makeup brand CIRCA Beauty, remains in awe of Gosling's work ethic, saying:

"The way he works, his commitment to his craft, how he wants to make everything as best as it can be—and that means making his co-stars as best as they can be.”

“Unfortunately—or fortunately—there’s only one Ryan, so I pretty much stopped acting after that," she added.

She has no regrets about the decision, chalking it up to waning interest in the highs and lows of Hollywood.

"I got tired fighting for the good roles," she said.

"There just was a point where I thought, ‘I’m going to create my own opportunities and become a producer on things and create my own material,’ but it just didn’t feel worth it to me."

Gosling seems to be embracing characters that don't take things too seriously.

He currently stars as lovesick stuntman Colt Seavers in the action comedy The Fall Guy, based on the '80s TV series about Hollywood stuntmen.

At the LA premiere of the film, he reprised playing Beavis from the adult animated series Beavis and Butt-Head from the viral SNL sketch that also featured Mikey Day as Butt-Head.

They both hilariously crashed a red carpet interview with his Fall Guy co-star, Emily Blunt.