Ryan Gosling says he turns down “dark” roles for the sake of his family

Ryan Gosling has said he will no longer do “dark” roles in order to preserve his mental health for his family.

The actor’s latest role is in the new action-comedy The Fall Guy, which sees him play a stuntman who is working on his ex-girlfriend’s (Emily Blunt) directorial debut, only to find himself involved in a conspiracy connected to the film’s leading man.

Gosling has two children with his partner Eva Mendes and told Variety that he won’t take on roles that are too psychologically demanding anymore.

“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.”

“I think La La Land was the first,” Gosling added about when he started to take on different roles. “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.’ 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.”

In a four-star review of The Fall Guy, NME wrote: “In short, The Fall Guy is a delight from start to finish, thanks to a sparkling script, thrilling action sequences and to-die-for comic chemistry between the two leads. There are even a couple of lovely nods to the original TV show, which is kind, considering nobody under 50 is likely to clock them.”

Meanwhile, a producer on the film recently revealed how Taylor Swift‘s song ‘All Too Well’ ended up being used in a scene where Gosling’s character Colt Seavers cries in his car.

“It was not written in, and when we were shooting, David [Leitch, director] had a Harry Nilsson song playing. But it felt a little melodramatic to me in a bad way,” Emily McCormick said.

It turned out Gosling was in agreement. “What’s weird is Ryan and I sometimes think of the same things at similar times, and he said, ‘I wonder if we should try Taylor in that scene’. He knows that the love story is modern, fresh, messy, wild, real—all the things that Taylor evokes.”