Ryan Gosling Shares Why He Avoids Gritty Roles

Actor Ryan Gosling doesn’t just worry about what movies his family sees. He worries about the ones they make.

Gosling, who starred last year in “Barbie,” is married to Cuban-American actress Eva Mendes. They have two young daughters, People notes.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Magazine, Gosling says he wants the movies in which he has a role to be a positive experience for the family.

“I don’t really take roles that are going to put me in some kind of dark place,” Gosling said.

“This moment is what I feel like trying to read the room at home and feel like what is going to be best for all of us. The decisions I make, I make them with Eva and we make them with our family in mind first,” he said.

Gosling said that his role in “La La Land” started his new direction.

“It was just sort of like, ‘Oh, this will be fun for them, too, because even though they’re not coming to set, we’re practicing piano every day or we’re dancing or we’re singing,’” he said.

“Their interest in ‘Barbie’ and their disinterest in Ken was an inspiration. I thought, they were already making little movies about their Barbies on the iPad when it happened, so the fact that I was going off to work to make one too, we just felt like we were aligned,” he said.

The family goes where he does, which has included a trip to Sydney, Australia, to shoot “The Fall Guy.” Gosling also tries to mesh shooting with school schedules.

There’s a bit of a downside, as Gosling realized when a leap for “The Fall Guy” led to panic.

“I think it’s happened when I had kids—really, you start to be way more conscious of everything you do and everything you’ve ever done and everything you will do if you get a chance to do it,” he said.

As a parent, Gosling said he tried to live in the present, and not map his parenting style from his childhood.

“I’m trying to just figure out who they are and be there for them in the way that I can. They’re such clear and distinct personalities that it’s sort of becoming obvious,” he said.

Fatherhood was important enough to him that after the 2018 film “First Man” he took four years off to be a dad.

“Just to be with my family. I didn’t want to miss anything,” he said, according to Variety.

“My priorities changed, and I wanted to be with my kids. It’s going super fast. I hear the clock ticking,” he said.

“I don’t know how much time I’m going to get, and I don’t want to spend it in the wrong place. I know I’m not spending it in the wrong place if I’m with my family,” he said.