Ryan Gosling is a very funny man

Ryan Thomas Gosling facts

• He was an accomplished child actor, a cast member of the early-’90s iteration of Mickey Mouse ClubThe album launched the careers of Justin Timberlake Britney Spear and Keri Russel.
• He’s from Canada, so he probably knows how to properly store milk.
• He once started a band called “The Haunted” with Zach Shields. Dead Man’s Bones. It’s my favorite bit of Gosling trivia. Listen to their album, it’s great.
• The man is hilarious.

That last point is now at the forefront of everyone’s minds, thanks to the colossal success of Barbie, where Gosling’s uproarious, doe-eyed portrayal of Ken virtually steals the show. For a long time, however, this felt like a hidden talent of Gosling’s, a thing he was very capable of but rarely asked to do. Gosling, an impossibly beautiful man, is best known as the lead actor in movies like The Notebook, Driving, La La Land” Blade Runner 2049Films that feature his picture on the poster, inviting you to go on an improbable romantic or cool journey.

Warner Bros.

There were, however, comedies that Gosling appeared in. All you need to know aboutMovies like The Avengers and the Hobbit are great examples of how a talented actor or actress can steal the show. Movies like Crazy, Stupid and Love, where his effortless cool is contrasted with Steve Carell’s divorcé awkwardness, or The Big ShortThe film, which was smarmy and nonstop, weaponized his charms in order to play a slimy Bond salesman.

Barbie is notable because it’s one of the few times Gosling has taken on a bona fide lead role in a comedy. The two previous examples are Shane Black’s excellent comedy-noir Nice GuysAnd the sweet indie Lars and The Real Girl, about a nice man’s romantic relationship with a sex doll and the small town that he eventually finds community in.

Nice Guys, an excellent staple of Netflix’s library, might be Gosling’s funniest role. Gosling portrays hapless single parent and private detective Holland March in a role where he is hired by a company to locate a missing pornstar. He quickly finds himself in over his head, and is entangled by Jackson Healy’s (Russell Crowe), a reluctant partner. Nice Guys sees Gosling operating in a wide range of modes — in one scene, he’s Lou Costello, in another, he’s Elliott Gould by way of Robert Downey Jr. Later, he’s Buster Keaton. It’s wonderful.

Lars and The Real Girl demonstrates what makes Gosling such a gifted comedic performer, and it’s also the reason he’s good in all of his roles: It’s his sincerity. LarsIt could easily have traded cheap jokes for crude humor. Instead, it consistently focuses on warmth and genuine emotions, and never becomes overly sweet. This is Gosling’s superpower: His characters You can also believeHe believes in everything so completely and sincerely, that you can see his convictions spilling from his eyes.

Ken and the Driver have a lot in common. Blade Runner 2049’s K, with his version of Neil Armstrong in Damien Chazelle’s First ManDean Pereira in Blue ValentineSebastian La La Land. That overwhelming belief makes his comedies funnier and his dramas more wrenching; it’s why even his more confounding action films, like Only God Can Forgive, Still manage to feel oddly soulful. Ryan Gosling believes that cinema is a make-believe world.