12 Times Ryan Gosling Was 'Kenough'
Ryan Gosling is busy shining onscreen as Stereotypical Ken in the new "Barbie" movie directed by Greta Gerwig. And while the film is busy breaking box office records, Gosling mania is in full swing everywhere. But longtime fans of the superstar actor have been feeling his Kenergy for years. Whether he's starring in quirky indie films like "Lars and the Real Girl" or touring with a rock band, he always brings that special Gosling charm.
The actor has owned the internet on more than one occasion, stood by the side of women by proudly proclaiming his feminism, and shown how much he adores his family in gushing interviews. From best kiss awards to Chrome extensions, the award-winning actor has always been Kenough in the eyes of his legion of adoring fans — going all the way back to his Disney days.
Here are 12 times that Ryan Gosling stole the hearts of everyone.
Ryan Gosling ran up the music charts with his song on the Barbie soundtrack
Several songs on the "Barbie" soundtrack are making waves on the charts, and Gosling's ballad "I'm Just Ken" is one of them. It's officially a Top 40 hit in the U.K., and fans in the U.S. are digging it as well. The song's writer Mark Ronson loved the Kenergy Gosling brought to the track — even though it was never meant to be sung by the actor. Discussing the song with Vanity Fair, Ronson said, "[H]e was really amazing, and when he really did start hitting the big notes, I was like, 'This dude is a vocal powerhouse!'" Ronson was impressed with the actor's delivery and how he managed to ensure the somewhat silly lyrics remained heartfelt.
While Ronson may have been surprised by Gosling's pipes, longtime fans were not. Gosling was a Mouseketeer busting out Jodeci songs as a preteen, and his "La La Land" duet with Emma Stone won an Oscar. But his musical stylings don't stop there. Gosling was a member of the band Dead Man's Bones, which released an album in 2009. The band did a short North American tour, and one song from the album was featured in the 2013 horror film "The Conjuring."
He is a protective dad and husband
Ryan Gosling and his partner Eva Mendes have two daughters together: Esmeralda Amada and Amada Lee. The family is notoriously private, and Gosling does not share photos of his children. The couple even kept their daughters' birthdays secret for a long while. On "Good Morning America," Gosling likened living in his house of women as "walking through a field of flowers every day." Even the girls' names show how much this dad loves his daughters. Amada means beloved, adored, and dear in Spanish.
An appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" really showcased how protective of his family Gosling is. In the 2016 interview, Gosling told a story about his eldest daughter playing outside with chalk. She was drawing on the sidewalk, but another child kept erasing her name. While the little girl was ready to forgive and forget, her dad did not feel the same about the situation. "They're disrespecting your mother. Because she gave you this name, and they're erasing it," he remembered saying. He then told his daughter she needed to erase the other child's name — his version of protective may veer into vindictive, but his heart appears to be in the right place.
Ryan Gosling has proclaimed himself a feminist
Ryan Gosling grew up in a female-centric household and has always held women in high esteem. But it goes beyond simply liking women: Back in 2016, Gosling told Evening Standard, "I think women are better than men." And his daughters really drove the point home for him. "My home life now is mostly women," he said. "They are better than us. They make me better."
It isn't just soundbites about his family, either. When his film "Blue Valentine" was given an NC-17 rating, Gosling called out the hypocrisy and misogyny inherent in the industry in an interview with Movieline. "It's misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman's sexual presentation of self. I consider this an issue that is bigger than this film." And while his film "Lost River" wasn't well received when it premiered at Cannes in 2014, it is considered an ode to anti-misogyny.
Gosling doesn't have any problem praising women he admires either. He has spoken about his mother, sister, his partner, and his daughters at length, but he also praises women he isn't in direct relationships with as well. In a 2015 Daily Telegraph interview, he spoke about women in the industry he looked up to, "There are lots of great women out there who I really admire: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, the 'Broad City' girls [Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer], Lena Dunham, and Kathryn Bigelow."
He shows up for his kids
The first time fans got a glimpse of Ryan Gosling's daughter, Esmeralda, was on her first Halloween in the arms of her super supportive dad. The 1-year-old was adorably dressed in a skeleton costume complete with face paint, and her parents wore matching attire. Gosling wore black robes, skeleton gloves, and a skeleton face mask. Eva Mendes wore her own skeleton costume and hat with a more elaborate version of her daughter's face paint. The happy family was captured enjoying holiday festivities in LA. Daily Mail U.K. was able to snap some exclusive photos of the baby's first appearance and her supportive parents.
Gosling continues to show up for his children, even choosing projects based on how they will affect his family. He opted to star in "The Gray Man" in order to take his kids somewhere cool, and he wanted to be in "Barbie" as a way to introduce his daughters to his work. He and Mendes work as a team to raise their children. "It's a team effort every day," she told Forbes in 2022.
Ryan Gosling teamed up with an audience member to troll Conan O'Brien
In his 2013 appearance on "Conan," Ryan Gosling took it upon himself to troll the late night host, and he even got an audience member to join in on his shenanigans. The segment starts with the actor admitting he once sat in the audience of a talk show — a show that passed out Jolly Ranchers to the audience. Conan O'Brien admitted that he doesn't give his audience candy but jokes that he hands out Cadillacs instead. After a bit of banter, Gosling asks if he can bring an audience member onstage with him.
The lucky one chosen by Gosling to sit in the hot seat was a woman named Linda from Westminster, California. After the first couple of questions, the actor tells Linda she's doing well, but they need to build some conflict with the host. He starts coaching her on how to answer Conan's questions, basically feeding her insults. Linda is good-natured, if a little embarrassed, but she delivers the lines whispered in her ear with confidence. Conan laughs off the insults but does call the whole affair the "most hostile interview I've ever taken part in."
He became a Chrome extension
Back in 2013, developer Katherine Champagne basically took over the internet when she created a Chrome extension that turned every photo on the internet into a photo of Ryan Gosling. The extension was named "Hey Girl" after the very popular Gosling meme, and it inserted random photos of the star into every webpage the user visited. Champagne told Mashable she created it to get more women into tech. "I hope that heygirl.io inspires more women to get into web development — there needs to be more of us, ladies!" she explained. "It's not all math, it's not boring — as I hope heygirl.io evidences, I've found programming to be an incredible creative outlet."
Gosling doesn't quite understand the internet's fascination with him. He compared the meme treatment to Fabio getting hit in the face by a bird when speaking about his online fame to Variety in 2016, saying, "I don't know if I'm the pigeon or I'm Fabio's face. Depends on the day, I guess." He also joked about his Twitter profile. Gosling was being impersonated on the bird app, so he got his own verified account. But apparently, people preferred his imposter and made it a point to tell him!
Ryan Gosling broke character on SNL
Ryan Gosling has hosted "Saturday Night Live" twice: on December 5, 2015, and on September 30, 2017. Both times, he was in some pretty memorable sketches, but his first hosting gig included a hilarious alien abduction skit that nearly broke the actor.
In the skit, Gosling, Cecily Strong, and Gosling's "Barbie" co-star Kate McKinnon are interviewed about their abduction experiences by characters played by Bobby Moynihan and Aidy Bryant. The skit starts with Strong and Gosling describing their beautiful experiences with the alien beings, but then the chain-smoking McKinnon paints a very different abduction experience. The camera shows Moynihan and Bryant barely keeping it together as she talks about having to pee in a bowl, and when the shot goes back to Gosling, he is already starting to giggle.
Later in the skit, he falls apart and starts laughing so hard that his body is shaking. The audience is laughing along with Gosling quite loudly, and Strong's next lines almost get lost. She attempts to cover his character break by exclaiming, "He's crying," which only makes him laugh harder. Gosling does manage to pull it together enough to deliver his last lines in the sketch, but it's a close call.
He crashed Russell Crowe's award presentation
Back in 2015, Gosling was paired with Aussie actor Russell Crowe in a comedic '70s-style crime caper titled "The Nice Guys." The pair seemed to develop a bit of a bromance off-camera, which became extremely evident when Gosling popped up as Crowe was presenting an award.
Crowe was invited to announce the best supporting actress nominees for that year's Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, but because he was in LA filming, he had to do it live via satellite. Gosling wandered into the shot much to the Australian audience's delight and congratulated Crowe on winning an award. The two quipped about whether Gosling living in New Zealand for two years made him an honorary Aussie, and Crowe busted his chops about his penchant for appearing onscreen shirtless.
Gosling gave a horrible go at an Aussie accent that got a chuckle out of Crowe and the audience. The bit was most likely planned because Crowe was already standing off-center at the start of the clip, but it was hilarious nonetheless.
Ryan Gosling saved a British journalist from a car accident
You already know Ryan Gosling plays the hero role in the Netflix action thriller "The Gray Man," but did you know he has also been a hero in real life? A British journalist named Laurie Penny does. Penny was in New York when she was almost hit by a taxi, but luckily for her, Gosling was there to intervene. She tweeted about the harrowing incident, saying, "Ryan Gosling grabbed me away from a taxi."
Saving a journalist from a car accident wasn't the first time Gosling was in the limelight for being a Good Samaritan. In 2011, he broke up a street fight in the city as well. Gosling described the incident to MTV, explaining that the altercation started over a stolen painting. The artist whose work was stolen attacked the thief. Gosling was able to break up the fight but admitted to being embarrassed that it all became such a big deal.
Penny would later walk back the magnitude of the incident in a Gawker piece. She agreed that he did save her from getting hit by a car, but she was concerned that the incident had become a bigger story to Americans than "war in the Middle East."
He and Rachel McAdams recreated the iconic Notebook kiss
"Shrek 2" may have been the highest-grossing domestic box office movie of 2004, but for Ryan Gosling fans, only one movie mattered that year: "The Notebook." And what would the 1940s-set historical romance be without that kiss? Everyone knows it — it was the poster shot after all. Plus, it was even honored at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards.
Gosling and then-girlfriend Rachel McAdams were nominated for best kiss up against other onscreen lip-locks such as Natalie Portman and Zach Braff's kiss in "Garden State" and Jennifer Garner and Natassia Malthe's smooch in "Elektra." No one was surprised when the real-life couple took the golden popcorn, but everyone was surprised by the live re-creation. The pair took the stage to accept their award, and McAdams removed her blazer. Gosling motioned for her to come to him with Maroon 5 playing in the background — and the rest is history. The reactions from people in the audience are almost as good as the kiss itself. Lindsey Lohan looks shocked, and Hillary Duff can't stop giggling.
McAdams and Gosling's iconic PDA moment couldn't keep the couple together, however. The pair split in 2007 (though both have found happiness with other partners since).
Ryan Gosling taught Jimmy Kimmel how to waltz
While promoting "La La Land" in 2016, Ryan Gosling was a guest on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," where he talked about the training his role in the award-winning film required. Jimmy Kimmel brought up his Mouseketeer days, but the actor denied they played a role, joking that his '90s hip-hop dance skills didn't help him with the film's classical dance numbers. The host noted that his newfound skills would still at least make him the star of the next wedding he attended, but Gosling suggested he had already forgotten the moves somehow. A flabbergasted Kimmel refused to believe this, and Gosling not only admitted to remembering how to waltz, eventually, but he reluctantly agreed to teach the host how to as well.
The ensuing dance lesson included Gosling showing Kimmel the steps, yelling at him for not maintaining eye contact, and then finally, a very short waltz. It was a charming segment, and Kimmel came away from it looking as smitten as a teenage girl.
He is known to gush about his partner Eva Mendes
While Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes are notoriously private about their relationship, the two have occasionally spoken about each other in interviews. The pair were first linked in 2011, and by 2015, they were celebrating Christmas with their first child. While talking about his holiday plans with Hello!, Gosling gushed about his partner, saying, "I know that I'm with the person I'm supposed to be with. ... There's nothing else I'm looking for."
The following year, the couple welcomed their second child. Rumors swirled that they also tied the knot, but a rep denied that there was any truth to an Us Weekly story that purported to confirm this. In his 2017 Golden Globe acceptance speech, Gosling was once again gushing about Mendes. He thanked her specifically and claimed he wouldn't be standing on stage accepting the award without her. He praised her work taking care of their daughters while also taking care of her brother who was battling cancer.
Mendes has always had nice things to say about Gosling as well. In a since-deleted Instagram post, she responded to someone telling her to get out more by saying, "Rather be home with my man than anywhere else in the world."