Ryan Gosling
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Ryan Gosling was honored by the Santa Barbara Film Festival on Saturday night, and he used his speech to reflect on his long journey to becoming Kane.
While accepting the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Cinema at a gala dinner in Santa Barbara, Gosling said: “Up until this moment, I had only thought about how much cinema had done for me, and I had never thought about what it had done.” I've done it for the movies.
He recalls how he had a cursing problem in third grade (“I didn't think it was a problem but my teachers did and I thought they were a bunch of uptight mothers—wait.”) and struggled in school, until one of his teachers planned weekly visits to the library and made a pact that For every book the actor reads, he could rent a movie from the library's collection.
“Movies were broadening my horizons, but they also taught me how to dream, or how to dream bigger, anyway,” Gosling continued. “That whole experience, filmmakers, actors making their own stories, my mother pulling me out of school to show me how to make my own story — even at a young age, film opened a door that leads to a world where you don't daydream. It doesn't mean you're wasting time, it means you're doing your job.” A job I couldn't wait to do, a job I started doing immediately — if you count wearing hammer pants and dancing in the mall, or singing “When a Man Loves a Woman” at weddings during a garter belt ceremony.
Gosling hissed Barbie Director Greta Gerwig, who was present at the event, never let the film crew forget how lucky they were to work in Hollywood, noting: “I, personally, was very lucky. I got to go to the moon, be a bank robber on a motorcycle, A getaway driver, a waltz across the stars, a primary school teacher – albeit a drug addict – who has become a replicant of the future, a gangster from the past, a lovable stuntman, and most recently, thanks to Greta, a 70-year-old doll. She collapsed laughing on stage.
Gerwig paid tribute to Gosling, toasting his performance as Caine and hailing it as a “delicious and unexpected combination of genius.”
“He has the intense force of Marlon Brando, the brilliant comic pain of John Barrymore, the tragic realism of Montgomery Clift, the masterful showmanship of John Travolta, and the sly wit of Gene Wilder,” Gerwig added.
Steve Carell, who worked with Gosling Crazy stupid love And The big shortwas also on hand to talk about the star, recalling that the two were once talking about their plans for the weekend and Gosling said that his band would be playing a concert at a senior center in Glendale on Friday night.
“Isn't that just great? A movie star could have told that story on a talk show, and he would have used it, and he would have gotten some juice from it, and monetized it, and maybe it would have gone viral as a GIF or a meme, #RyanAtTheSeniorCenter,” Carell joked. “But not Ryan Gosling, he just did it to please some old people,” deadpanned. I find that very annoying.
“Freelance entrepreneur. Communicator. Gamer. Explorer. Pop culture practitioner.”
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