Ryan Gosling on Lars and the Real Girl

Published October 11, 2007 in Movie Interviews

By Ryan Parsons | Image property of MGM.

Lars and the Real Girl could sound like a zany comedy. It's about a man who falls in love with a sex doll. But the film does not play it that way. It is about Lars's sensitivity and helping him through this delusion. Actor Ryan Gosling felt a kinship with his character.

Gosling and His Real Girl

"He reminded me of one of my uncles," said Gosling. "He could have been a part of my family or something. I felt like I knew him and everything. It was a really great experience for me because a lot of the other things I’ve done I’ve been investigating the self-destructive part of my nature. Lars is kind of like a Don Quixote-esque character. He is the power of belief and whatever he believes is true."

Lars introduces the doll as Bianca and acts like he's having a real relationship. Therefore, it becomes real. "When Quixote goes into the courtyard of the castle and he’s talking to the prostitutes, he thinks they are royalty. And for that moment that he thinks they are royalty, they think they are too. They play along and for that moment it becomes true. And because he’s so positive, because he’s so good, and there is not a self-destructive part of his nature, he has a choice between going down a road that would end in a really bleak way, or he takes this road. Every chance he gets, when it could get dark, he goes for the light. And that’s his nature. And for me it was such fertile creative ground that the ideas for him were endless. I could do a scene a million times for him and do it differently every time because he exists in such a positive place, that so much can grow there."

Lars and the Real Girl

The cast and crew even treated Bianca like a costar. "When I met Bianca, she instantly has a presence. It sounds funny, but I guarantee if you were in a room with her for 10 minutes you’d know what I was talking about. She’s so real looking and it’s fascinating. She’s so detailed and she has beautiful freckles and you look at her and you’d think she was looking at you. You look away and you think you saw her blink. And she’s fascinating and everybody was compelled by her. She has a presence. She comes on set and you feel that she's there. She has this really calm, calming presence. When we did scenes together, I never felt like it was me and a doll. It felt like it was me and my buddy. As soon as they say action it’s just her and I and we're totally alone in those scenes so I felt a bond with her. Over the course of the film I started to feel more relaxed and I looked forward to our scenes together and we formed a real bond."

There were some practical matters of working with Bianca. "She had handlers. She had like an entourage. Her entourage, the girls that were taking care of her, would give her magazines in between takes, and she was always treated like one of the actors. And everybody on the crew went out of their way to respect Lars’ idea of her."

Ultimately, it was important for Gosling to see the entire crew treat Bianca with respect. "It was affirming because I felt like when I read the script, look, this movie is easy to pick on. This movie is like the kid in the helmet on the playground. It’s really easy to pick on him because he’s so vulnerable. The film is vulnerable in the place that it sits. It wears its heart on its sleeve. There have been criticisms of the film saying that people would never act that way and it’s so idealistic to think that the townspeople would be so supportive and all of that, but the crew, they didn’t read the script. They don’t know what we are making. A lot of it is just a bunch of grips punching a clock, and they all, almost all of them, there were doubters, but all of them kind of eventually over the course of the film developed their own personal relationship with her or their idea of her. The journey of making the film reflected the journey of the characters in the film."

Even though Bianca is sold as a sex doll, the film never addresses a love scene between her and Lars. Whether Lars even saw her that was is left up to audiences. "I have my own ideas about that, but I think that’s not in the film for a reason. That’s private and they respected their relationship and their privacy and I’d like to honor that too. But I have my own ideas about it."

Lars and the Real Girl opens to theaters on October 12th.

For the poster, trailer and additional movie info, go to the Lars and the Real Girl Movie Page.

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Ryan Parsons
Sources: Image property of MGM.
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