RYAN GOSLING SAYS 'THE NOTEBOOK' DIRECTOR CAST HIM BECAUSE HE HAD 'NO NATURAL LEADING MAN QUALITIES'

Ryan Gosling costarred with Rachel McAdams in the 2004 romantic drama 'The Notebook'

It may seem hard to imagine now, but Ryan Gosling says he earned a few of his early breakout roles because directors thought he didn't fit a typical mold for a leading man on the big screen.

While speaking with GQ for a cover story published Wednesday, Gosling, 42, recalled that The Notebook director Nick Cassavetes "straight up told me: ‘The fact that you have no natural leading man qualities is why I want you to be my leading man,' " when he was cast as Noah opposite Rachel McAdams for the 2004 romance film.

As Gosling explained to the outlet, The Notebook was not the first time he had been cast in a role because a director believed the actor was not a natural fit for the character. He also identified 2001's The Believer — in which he starred as a Jewish man who becomes a Neo-Nazi — as a role he was cast in for similar reasons.

“The fact that I wasn’t really right for it was exactly [director Henry Bean] he thought I was right for it," the actor said.

Gosling, who next stars in the highly anticipated Barbie movie as Ken, made his breakthrough in the early 2000s with movies like The Believer and The Notebook. In the latter film, Gosling costarred as a younger version of man named Noah, who falls in love with Allie (McAdams) in the 1940s. The film tracks their relationship's progression through the decades.

Gosling and McAdams, 44, dated for some time well after the completion of The Notebook, though the film's director Cassavetes has said the two had some trouble "getting along" at times during filming.

“God bless The Notebook,” Gosling told GQ of the movie in 2007. “It introduced me to one of the great loves of my life. But people do Rachel and me a disservice by assuming we were anything like the people in that movie. Rachel and my love story is a hell of a lot more romantic than that.”

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Elsewhere in Gosling's GQ profile published Wednesday, the actor spoke extensively about his role as Ken in the upcoming Barbie movie, which costars Margot Robbie as the titular Barbie and seems to follow iconic Mattel dolls as they travel from Barbie Land to the real world.

“I would say, you know, if people don’t want to play with my Ken, there are many other Kens to play with," he said, when asked of news stories published by outlets like the New York Post regarding some fans' disapproval of his casting as Ken.

“It is funny, this kind of clutching-your-pearls idea of, like, #notmyken," he continued. "Like you ever thought about Ken before this?”

Barbie is in theaters July 21.

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2023-06-01T15:19:07Z dg43tfdfdgfd