Ryan Gosling loves the thrill of surprise
Golden-Globe nominated actor looks for an emotional connection to his characters
If there’s anything Ryan Gosling looks for in an acting assignment, it’s the ability to take a genre role, twist it off the standard interpretation and blindside the viewer.
His romantic leads in “Lars and the Real Girl” and “Blue Valentine” were tender, vulnerable lost souls, while in “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” he turned a handsome, misogynistic player into someone smart, sophisticated and semi-hilarious. Gosling, who attended Lester B. Pearson High School in Burlington, gave the adrenalized thriller “Drive” an action antihero who was hyperviolent and a bit arty, then zigged into film noir sado-masochism in “Only God Forgives” and zagged toward slapstick private eye satire in “The Nice Guys.”
Occasionally he goes too far, packing on so much weight to play a grieving father in “The Lovely Bones” that Peter Jackson fired him and cast Mark Wahlberg in the part.
In the stylish musical “La La Land,” he turns a struggling 30something jazz pianist into a singing, dancing romantic lead with an almost angelic smile and a dark, melancholy soul. Through a series of chance meetings in overpopulated but lonely Los Angeles, he encounters the love of his life, an aspiring actress played by Emma Stone. In writer/director Damien Chazelle’s tuneful love letter to alluring Hollywood love stories, Gosling steps simultaneously into the tradition of giddy choreographed serenades and an elusive ambiguity about commitment that is utterly contemporary.
“There was a lot of preparation for this,” he said in a recent phone interview. He studied keyboard, song and dance, “thanks to my very patient and talented coaches. They were very, very, very good.
“Did you ever see the film ‘Cutting Edge’? It’s about a hockey player trying to learn how to figure skate. I felt at times like that. I had had experience of dancing as a kid, but ‘90s hip-hop is a little different from tapping and waltzing.”
Mandy Moore, choreographer for TV’s “Dancing With the Stars” and David O. Russell’s Oscarnominated “Silver Linings Playbook,” supervised Gosling’s softshoe courtship.
“She’s used to trying to find the diamond in the rough,” he said. “And she pulls the best out of everyone. So she believes that it’s possible, and she’s also a wonderful choreographer. She had great ideas that came from a place of character and not just solely from the idea of movement.”
That connected with what made the film appeal to him in general, he said. “Even though it was a musical, technically, it really was about these characters and their relationship. It makes it very accessible, even if you’re not a fan of musicals. When I read a script, I’m looking to be engaged by the story and have an emotional connection to the characters.
“The music and the dance was used as a way for these characters to communicate,” he said, which is why they sang in their natural voices rather than computer-tuned artificial perfection. “We tried to stay in character.
“What’s great about the collaboration with the choreographer and composer and everyone involved is that they really helped us find a way to sing and move in a way that really expressed our characters. So it wasn’t like we were breaking out of character and suddenly becoming different people in a musical.”
Stone had starred in “Cabaret” on Broadway. “Clearly she was more experienced than I was” with musical and movement technique, he said.
The love story between the leading characters is also a love letter to a wonderful bygone age of entertainment. Gosling’s character is obsessed with an old jazz club that is gone and the era that it represents.
“My character in the film is on the border to become a very bitter person,” he said. “He’s experienced so much failure and now is operating from a place of fear, and that’s not a good place to meet anyone, let alone a potential love interest” who’s not engaged in addictive nostalgia.
“It’s lucky for him that she comes along when she’s not bitter yet. She hasn’t been there as long and experienced that much rejection,” he said. “The love that they share inspires a change in both of them and keeps them afloat when they might otherwise go down.”
His appetite for distinctive material made “La La Land” too promising to resist.
“I don’t know what you’d call it. It has one foot in an old-fashioned sensibility,” as interpreted by Chazelle, one of the more acclaimed young American directors.
Industry insiders are predicting an Oscar for Stone, who is working alongside Gosling for the third time (following “Crazy, Stupid, Love” and “Gangster Squad”). It’s a partnership that Gosling could imagine continuing.
“I saw how hard she worked over the course of the preparation. And I also was there to see how effortless she made it in the end. It’s great to see all her hard work being recognized.”