Top 101 Ryan Gosling Quotes

I’ve wanted to make films since a really young age. It’s always been my passion.

I’m Canadian, and so American politics aren’t really in my wheelhouse.

I’m from Canada, and I think, like everyone growing up anywhere else in the world, you are very aware of America – it sort of looms large in its legend, and so did Detroit.

Actors become very professional and proficient about watching out for each other’s light and not stepping on each other’s lines.

For me, I sort of felt like it was kind of a fairytale… but an interesting one. I don’t know of anybody who has had a romance quite like this, but I certainly know people who have stuck it out.

I’ve been thinking about a bank robbery my whole life.

Do you remember when Fabio got hit in the face with a pigeon on the roller coaster, and it broke his nose? Sometimes I feel like I’m the pigeon, and the Internet is Fabio’s face. Actually, I don’t know if I’m the pigeon, or I’m Fabio’s face. Depends on the day, I guess.

I try not to discriminate against genres.

It’s not good just to have life experience of film-making and that’s all. It’s hard to play a real person when you’ve been in jets and town cars for three years.

I have a friend that is a WWII buff, and we sat and talked a lot about stuff like the war and the reasons behind it, and you now it’s all in the uniform. Once you’re in it, it usually does all the work for you.

If I’m still acting at 46, I’ll be surprised.

I don’t like the process of meeting someone and you make a film and that’s it. You think you’re just getting started, and then it’s over.

I don’t think you can discriminate against budgets, you know? I’m an actor, I guess, so I’m just trying to play as many characters as I can. If there’s a character I think I can play, and they’re going to let me do it, I’ll do it whether it’s $10 or $1 million or more.

It’s not easy to leave your hometown and your family and your support system and come out to Los Angeles to – to pursue a dream where the odds are not in your favor.

If the character is true, the movie will fall into place. Or at least that’s what you hope.

I feel it’s important to show that one thing that you do doesn’t define you as a human being. It doesn’t mean there aren’t ramifications or you shouldn’t pay for that but its not who you are.

It’s weird to have no control over something that you’re involved in.

It’s interesting the kind of freedom the musical form gives you. The rules are out the window. You can get impressionistic without seeming pretentious. Because it’s perceived as an inherently accessible form, it gives filmmakers some leeway.

I grew up in a town called Cornwall, Ontario, which is about an hour outside of Montreal.

You can’t geek out with a lot of people about Linda Manz.

I always wanted to entertain. When I was six, a scrawny, scrawny kid, I’d get in my red speedo and do muscle moves. I actually thought I was muscular. I didn’t know everyone was laughing at me.

We should get a Roomba for our Roomba. I feel bad for it because it works tirelessly, and at night I can hear it cleaning, and I just feel bad for it.

What’s nice with comedy is that you know it’s working if it’s funny.

It’s not like I set out to be ‘the indie guy.’

My sister and I used to sing at weddings. We would sing ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ to the bride. We’d do it right before the garter ceremony.

I don’t really have that much angst to get rid of.

I was very impressed by Walt Disney and the idea that you could have a dream and you could realize it to the point where people could walk around within it… It still resonates with me. I wanted to be somebody who believed in their ideas that much.

I grew up on Shane Black movies, and I grew up on Joel Silver movies.

I’m waiting to get old – I think old guys with tattoos look good.

I need a break from myself as much as I imagine the audience does.

The ’70s just seemed dirty, honestly, and not in an interesting way. It’s not the ’80s. In fact, it’s 10 less. I grew up in the ’80s, so that’s more of an interesting time to me.

I just have my own taste, and I just try and stick with that. I’m just trying to play as many characters as I can for as long as I have an opportunity to.

People don’t step outside themselves and make the film they want to make, because they’re afraid of the reaction. But once you get that reaction and have lived through it, there’s nothing they can do to get you down.

Acting isn’t that hard, really. I mean, I think that people make a big deal about it, but you just kind of try to say your lines naturally.

My home life now is mostly women. They are better than us. They make me better.

As a kid I decided that a Canadian accent doesn’t sound tough. I thought guys should sound like Marlon Brando. So now I have a phony accent that I can’t shake, so it’s not phony anymore.

I had a lot of romanticised ideas of what Detroit was like, but I didn’t get there until I was 30, and it was very different than I had imagined it.

My mom was really cool.

If I have any particular appeal to women, maybe it’s because I listen more than other guys do and appreciate how they think and feel about things.

I just sort of take it from a character perspective, and I don’t know if he was necessarily spiritual, but I do think he had hope. He was a character that was comfortable having hope in his life, and hope is faith.

I sometimes forget to have breakfast in the morning, but when I actually buy a box of cereal, I will probably eat it not only for breakfast but also as a snack later on.

There’s a lot of pressure to be the lead of a film. I have done it. It’s not my favorite way to work.

Show me a man who wouldn’t give it all up for Emma Stone, and I’ll show you a liar.

It was a strange experience, making a love story and not getting along with your co-star in any way.

I make a mean tuna fish sandwich.

Most movies, you have to try and forget you’re making a movie, because there are trailers and booms and lights and marks, and it’s everywhere.

I grew up on Mel Brooks films. That was film to me until I got a little bit older and realised there were other kinds of movies.

I feel like everything has happened naturally.

Some of the styles of dance in ‘La La Land’ I wish I had spent time on when I was a kid.

I never was that boy who loved gangster films, but when I was growing up, I was obsessed with the detective Dick Tracy. It was one of my favourite movies as a kid, and he really inspired me. I would have loved to be part of that golden age of Hollywood in the 1940s. It made me want to become an actor.

I wish I could be Peter Falk.

Freedom is such a gift.

Falling in love is a narcissistic endeavor. You play the role of lover, and you find someone to act it out on.

That’s the power of film. If it’s good, it can somehow make you feel connected to even the farthest thing from your own experience.

I guess there’s something about you don’t know why you’re attracted to a character, but you’re attracted to them enough to want to – it’s like when a song comes on, and you feel like dancing. You don’t know why; you just want to dance. It’s hard to analyze that feeling, and if you do, you get far away from it.

I think it’s more interesting to see people who don’t feel appropriately. I relate to that, because sometimes I don’t feel anything at all for things I’m supposed to, and other times I feel too much. It’s not always like it is in the movies.

I was highly influenced by violence.

Watching myself. Watching the people around me. There was some part of me that was there as a kid and growing up and living my life, but there was also some part of me that was watching it all happen from the nosebleeds.

Maybe in my life I sort of put myself in situations that were chaotic, outside of my life.

I grew up in a family of strong women and I owe any capacity I have to understand women to my mother and big sister. They taught me to respect women in a way where I’ve always felt a strong emotional connection to women, which has also helped me in the way I approach my work as an actor.

‘The Nice Guys’ fulfilled my 1970s fantasy.

All my characters are me. I’m not a good enough actor to become a character. I hear about actors who become the role and I think ‘I wonder what that feels like.’ Because for me, they’re all me.

When my films don’t do well, I’m hurt and surprised. It’s discouraging.

When I was a kid, I saw ‘Rambo First Blood’, and the next day, I took knives to school and threw them at everybody. So I was definitely influenced by violent films before ‘Drive.’

If people want to put me up on their walls, I’ll love it.

I think that you can sort of have your own personal journey and you know, you can just kind of apply that to whatever characters you’re playing.

There’s something messed up with my brain.

My first exposure to what Hollywood was like, behind the scenes, was when Joel Silver started screaming at Roger Rabbit at the beginning of ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit.’

You know us crazy kids. We’ll do anything crazy to our hair.

I think ‘Believer’ and ‘Leland’ were such great things to have been a part of, and I learned a lot.