From The Notebook and La La Land to Drive, here are the best of Ryan Gosling’s movies through the years that led him to his role as Ken in Barbie.
Over the past 20 years, Ryan Gosling has given audiences several notable performances in both indie and blockbuster films, garnered numerous awards and accolades, and earned a spot as one of Hollywood’s most respected actors. He notably started his career in front of the camera as a teen in the early 1990s on “The Mickey Mouse Club” and continued to land minor roles on television throughout the remainder of the decade. By the 2000s, Gosling began acting in movies, with his role as Noah Calhoun in the 2004 film “The Notebook” launching him into superstardom. Since then, he’s had leading roles in Oscar-winning films like “La La Land” and “Blade Runner 2049,” but he recently received plenty of buzz for his latest work in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.”
“Barbie,” which stars Margot Robbie as the iconic fashion doll brought to life, features Gosling as Ken, Barbie’s counterpart and companion throughout the film. While the actor’s airheaded, lighthearted role is arguably a contrast to the mostly dramatic ones on his résumé, the character of Ken, according to Gosling himself, is not much different than he is. In GQ’s summer 2023 cover story, he explained, “There’s something about this Ken that really, I think, relates to that version of myself. Just, like, the guy that was putting on Hammer pants and dancing at the mall and smelling like Drakkar Noir and Aqua Net-ing bangs. I owe that kid a lot. I feel like I was very quick to distance myself from him when I started making more serious films. But the reality is that, like, he’s the reason I have everything I have.”
Ahead of “Barbie” hitting theaters on July 21, refresh your memory on some of Gosling’s best movies below!
In the film that made Gosling a household name and propelled him into the mainstream, he plays Noah Calhoun, a young lumber-mill worker in the 1940s. At a carnival, he meets Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams), an heiress to a wealthy family, and the two begin a passionate summer romance. When Allie’s parents forbid her from seeing Noah, their lives split apart. Years later, however, they reunite, and their love story blooms all over again. In the present day, Noah and Allie’s story is recounted by an elderly man to a woman living in a nursing home with him, proving the legacy of true love lasts forever.
The sequel to the 1982 acclaimed science-fiction film “Blade Runner,” “Blade Runner 2049” stars Gosling as K, a Nexus-9 replicant who works as a blade runner for the LAPD. As a blade runner, K is tasked with hunting and killing rogue replicants, and during one of his assignments, he discovers a secret that could lead to a war between humans and replicants. During his investigation, K seeks answers by tracking down former blade runner Richard Decker (Harrison Ford), who has been missing for decades.
