Ryan Gosling won rave reviews and has even been tipped for an Oscar nomination for his turn as Ken in the recent Barbie movie – and it seems that even the man himself was shocked at his performance.
The film’s director Greta Gerwig has revealed that the Canadian actor had an adorable reaction when watching back some of his scenes in the box office smash of the summer.
Speaking to Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast, the filmmaker told of how Ryan “genuinely transformed himself” to become Ken.
She said: “I think this is true for Margot [Robbie, who played Barbie] and for Ryan – collectively we slipped into this alternate universe.
“Even when we inevitably ended up doing some ADR [automated dialogue replacement] – and he’s great at ADR, of course – I could tell even when he was watching the performance back, there was almost this sense of, ‘I can’t believe I did that!’ In a wonderful way.”
Greta added: “We were in this heightened state, but I always think about the two of them in the last scene they have together up in the bedroom, it’s the most wonderful acting and most outrageous commitment and pathos within the matrix of anarchic comedy. It’s really great.”
The Oscar nominee also spoke of how she wrote the script with Ryan’s name on it, before she and her husband and co-writer Noah Baumbach had actually approached him to be part of the film.
“Noah and I had written his name in the script because we knew we were writing for Margot and I think… it felt like fantasy baseball in a way,” she explained.
“I’ve always known he’s very funny as an actor, but what’s funny about him as an actor always comes out of what makes him a great dramatic actor – which is that he takes everything incredibly seriously.
“There’s this sort of intelligence and off-centred approach – it’s never the obvious way to do it, but you can’t imagine it another way when you see it. So I had imagined him in it and I remember his name was written into the script.”
Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast is available on podcast platforms now.
