While being honoured by the Santa Barbara International Film Festival with the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film, Canadian actor Ryan Gosling credited cinema with making his life “a dream.”
“Most importantly, I got to meet the girl of my dreams, Eva Mendes, and have two dream children. I dreamed of making movies and now movies have made my life a dream,” says the star who played Ken in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” movie. “No way I have contributed half as much to cinema as cinema has given to me.”
Gerwig and Gosling’s “Crazy, Stupid, Love” and “The Big Short” co-star Steve Carell were there to celebrate the actor’s contribution to film and society.
Carell said: “Did you know that he once saved a woman from being hit by a taxi? Saved a dog from being run over on the highway? De-escalated a confrontation between total strangers? Drove to New Orleans to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Did you know that the only reason we know that he did any of these things is because someone saw him? Ryan Gosling doesn’t advertise his good deeds.”
The funnyman continued, “Time after time he makes interesting creative choices. He’s not driven by money, or fame, or status. … What makes it worse is that it’s genuine.” He joked, “I do love Ryan Gosling. I love him more than my wife. He is smart and intuitive and funny, he is a joy to be around, and most of all, and this is a big one for me, he is kind. Santa Barbara, you got this one right.”
Meanwhile, filmmaker Gerwig — whose “Barbie” movie got the Environmental Media Association’s Gold Seal for sustainable production — also had many moving words about Gosling at the coveted event. “There is no one that I would rather be giving a speech about than Ryan Gosling. He is so outrageously talented, it’s hard to know where exactly to begin,” she said. “From the moment we started talking, he just understood. … There would be no Barbie if he hadn’t come to be our Ken.”
On Gosling and Kirk Douglas, Gerwig said: “They commit to characters in all their beauty and their ugliness. Because they are actors and people who believe that redemption is possible. It is a philosophical position illustrated through acting.”
And the actor had kind words about his presenters as well: “I can’t think of two more gracious and talented people.”
On Carell, Gosling revealed: “He was so damn funny that the boom operator dropped the boom to hold his ribs. That’s how hard he was laughing. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone be so good it was a problem.”
Meanwhile, about his “Barbie” director, Gerwig, the actor said: “I don’t even know where to start with Greta. Even though she was making one of the biggest films of all time, she never let the weight of the task get in the way of what was important.”