Ryan Gosling Didn’t Think He’d Still Be Acting at His Current Age
Ryan Gosling has been in show business since his days in the Mickey Mouse Club. Although he’s still going strong, Gosling once predicted that he would’ve quit Hollywood by now.
Ryan Gosling didn’t think he’d still be acting in his 40s
Gosling had been a bit of a veteran actor since before he turned 40. Most audiences first caught glimpses of him in his childhood years on The Mickey Mouse Club. Afterwards, he fled to Los Angeles when he was 17, and didn’t get his first real acting job until he turned 19. He credited the film The Believer, where he played a Nazi, as his breakthrough film role.
“After I did The Believer, things changed for me,”’ Gosling once told The New York Times. ”I felt I had a place I could put the things I had inside of me into.”
He started receiving a lot more film offers after the feature. This eventually led to Gosling becoming one of Hollywood’s most notable stars. But he didn’t see himself being in the film industry forever.
“If I’m still acting at 46, I’ll be surprised,” Gosling once told The Telegraph.
Since he started acting at such a young age, he figured his 40s would be a good place to bow out.
“How many characters can you play? I’ve been acting since I was 12. If I was just starting now, maybe. But now I’m 30. If I do this for 10 more years I’ll be shocked,” he said.
Although he isn’t 46 yet, Gosling has already reached his early 40s, and his career is going stronger than ever. Which might mean he might’ve had a change of heart over the years.
Why Ryan Gosling briefly took a break from acting
Before reaching his 40s, Gosling already considered taking a long hiatus from the film industry. He began second-guessing his motivation for acting, and wondered if some time off would’ve helped reignite his passion.
“I’ve lost perspective on what I’m doing,” Gosling once said according to The Guardian. “I think it’s good for me to take a break and reassess why I’m doing it and how I’m doing it. And I think this is probably a good way to learn about that. I need a break from myself as much as I imagine the audience does.”
He also expressed some discomfort about his leading-man status back then. The Barbie star spent years working to find himself in the position he was in. But being a lead came with some sizable responsibility that might’ve also explained his break from acting.
“There’s a lot of pressure to be the lead of a film,” Gosling said. “I have done it. It’s not my favorite way to work.”
Ryan Gosling approached acting differently after becoming a father
Gosling eventually did take a break from acting, but for personal reasons. He had two children with his wife Eva Mendes, and wanted to spend as much time with his new family as possible. When he returned to the film industry, he decided to look at his work from another perspective.
“I treat it more like work now, and not like it’s, you know, therapy,” Gosling once told GQ. “It’s a job, and I think in a way that allows me to be better at it because there’s less interference.”
Gosling also began to gravitate towards more commercial projects as he’d gotten older. This marked a slight change in his career, where he often starred in smaller, more independent projects.
“I’ve always wanted to do it,” Gosling said. “I just never really had the opportunity like this, or it never kind of worked itself out this way. It took me a long time to get into sort of bigger, more commercial films. I had to kind of take the back entrance.”
