Ryan Gosling Responds to ‘Barbie’ Critics Who Say He’s Too Old to Play Ken

Ryan Gosling costarred in the 2004 love drama ‘The Notebook’ alongside Rachel McAdams.

It may sound difficult to believe now, but Ryan Gosling claims that he landed a couple of his early breakthrough parts because filmmakers saw him as not fitting the traditional mould for a leading man on the big screen.

Gosling, 42, told GQ for a cover story published Wednesday that The Notebook director Nick Cassavetes “straight up told me: ‘The fact that you have no natural leading man qualities is why I want you to be my leading man,'” when he was cast as Noah opposite Rachel McAdams in the 2004 romance film.

According to Gosling, The Notebook was not the first time he was cast in a part because a director felt he was not a good match for the character. He also mentioned The Believer, a 2001 film in which he played a Jewish guy who becomes a Neo-Nazi, as a part he got cast in for similar reasons.

“The fact that I wasn’t really right for it was exactly because [director Henry Bean] thought I was right for it,” the actor explained.

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Gosling, who will next be seen as Ken in the highly anticipated Barbie film, rose to prominence in the early 2000s with films such as The Believer and The Notebook. Gosling co-starred in the later picture as a more youthful version of Noah, a guy who falls in love with Allie (McAdams) in the 1940s. The film follows their love through the decades.

Gosling & McAdams, 44, dated for a long time after The Notebook was finished, despite the film’s director, John Cassavetes, has acknowledged the two had some difficulty “getting along” at points during filming.

God bless The Notebook, Gosling said of the film to GQ in 2007. It introduced me to one of my life’s great loves. But folks do Rachel and me injustice by associating us with the characters in the movie. Rachel and my love story is far more romantic than that.

In Gosling’s GQ feature, published Wednesday, he discussed his part as Ken in the upcoming Barbie film, which features Margot Robbie as the eponymous Barbie and appears to follow classic Mattel dolls as they go from Barbie Land into the real world.

I would say, you know, if people don’t want to play with my Ken, there are many other Kens to play with,” he stated in response to news headlines in sources such as the New York Post about some fans’ dissatisfaction of his casting as Ken.

It’s kind of funny, this clutching-your-pearls idea of, like, #notmyken, he continued. Did you ever consider Ken before this?