Trending Now: Ryan Gosling gives rare look into private life as shares words of wisdom from his young daughter – Fans React

Ryan Gosling is currently starring in box office hit Project Hail Mary and shared rare insight into his private life with daughter who inspired the look for his latest character

Known for the wide range of characters he portrays, Ryan Gosling is currently featured in the blockbuster hit Project Hail Mary, where he plays an astronaut who forms an unlikely friendship with an alien to save both their worlds.

The father of two is also set to appear in Star Wars: Starfighter, due for release in May next year. But he credits one of his daughters for helping shape the look of Ryland Grace, the 8th grade science teacher who is reluctantly dispatched by the government to a star system 11.9 light years from Earth in Project Hail Mary – adapted from Andy Weir’s novel.

He explains: “I was playing around with the character and trying to put on stuff and I put on glasses as a joke almost, because it felt cliched to wear glasses to play a scientist. My daughter came by and she was like ‘You look smarter in glasses.’ And I was like ‘Well, then, I’ll wear them’.” It comes as Ryan recently guest starred on Saturday Night Live where he was joined by an iconic British band.

READ MORE: Savannah Guthrie reveals new disturbing door detail at mother’s crime sceneREAD MORE: Robert De Niro accuses Trump of ‘enriching himself with Epstein class buddies’ in scathing speech

The choice clearly paid off, as the film, which premiered in the UK last week, has earned £122million globally so far, making it the year’s biggest movie opening.

Ryan, 45, who relocated from California to Hampstead, North London, last year with Hitch star Eva Mendes, 52, and their daughters Esmeralda, 11, and Amanda, nine, to shoot Starfighter, is a devoted father. He says his daughters assist him “in so many ways, I couldn’t list them all.”

The actor continued, “I think they’re so funny and helpful and smart.”

Ryan and Eva, who crossed paths while filming The Place Beyond the Pines in 2011, reportedly tied the knot in an intimate ceremony in 2022. Although the pair prefer keeping their children away from public attention, Ryan had them in mind when he took on the Project Hail Mary role.

He explains, “I was so grateful just as a father to get to make a story for my kids, maybe not to be too lofty, but for their generation. I was blown away by the book. I feel very lucky I got to have a unique experience, because it hadn’t been published yet, it was just in manuscript form, so I didn’t have any opinions to colour it for me.”

The Canadian star’s remarkable career includes a wide range of characters, from a romantic lead in The Notebook to a jazz pianist in La La Land, a smooth-talking bond trader in The Big Short, and a heart-wrenching turn as Dean Pereira in Blue Valentine. Playing Ryland Grace, he awakens aboard an interstellar spacecraft with no recollection of how he got there.

Slowly, he realizes he’s the only surviving crew member — but discovers he’s not truly alone. He’s accompanied by an extraterrestrial named Rocky, and together they tackle a scientific emergency.

Praising writer Andy Weir, Ryan notes, “Partly what’s so special about Andy’s work is the humour, [which] helps you to digest so much of the hard science and some of the things that are harder to understand.”

The cast brought their own interpretation, he explains. “It’s different because we had to personalise the humour and make it our own sense of humour. It became its own brand by the end of it.”

Ryan appreciates that Ryland’s memory loss means he has no predetermined sense of identity when he awakens from cryogenic sleep.

He explains, “I thought what was so compelling about him is that he doesn’t know who he is and that he’s not a natural hero. He has no fantasies of being a hero. He’s not like a typical movie hero, or he doesn’t want to be one. He finds his bravery in a really interesting way because he’s had amnesia and he’s able in a way to kind of forget who he was and that he might have been a coward. He’s given this opportunity to be who he wants to be and not who he was.”

Eager to celebrate the technical skill, creativity and action sequences that define blockbuster cinema, Ryan recently shared his regret at missing an unforgettable Tom Cruise moment during Starfighter production – he happened to be off when the Mission: Impossible icon arrived by helicopter to helm a scene.

Ryan recalls, “Tom Cruise flew his helicopter on to set. They were just shooting, and they heard a helicopter, they had to cut. And it was Tom Cruise. He lands in the middle of the set. He takes a camera, and he just starts shooting the action scene. It was an incredible moment, and I don’t know why he waited for the one day I wasn’t there. I’m gonna hope that was an accident.”

Meanwhile, he lauds the remarkable craftsmanship used to shoot the alien scenes in Project Hail Mary.

He shared, “It is puppetry and I think that’s the secret sauce of the movie. It really would have been a lot easier and a lot cheaper to do it another way. It was quite difficult to do it this way. I mean, five, six puppeteers. All of that entails having it work properly on camera. Creating space in the set for all of that was not something I think we anticipated. I don’t think anyone told our production designer that the set didn’t actually have to function in space.”

The challenge of bringing Rocky the alien to life mirrored the complexities of the relationship between the extraterrestrial and its reluctant astronaut companion.

Ryan explained, “They can’t be in each other’s atmosphere. They can’t communicate. Everything is difficult, and we were living that on set.” Despite the difficulties, they achieved an impressive outcome, and as Ryan concludes, “It all became part of the magic of the film.”

*This interview was adapted from The Arts Hour on the BBC World Service. It can be heard in its entirety on BBC Sounds.