In recent years Ryan Gosling has become one of Hollywood's rising stars with a string of hit movies, with one leading to a Best Actor Oscar nomination twelve months ago.Like many of today's popstars like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake Gosling joined The Mickey Mouse Club in 1990 at the age of thirteen,He stayed for the sixth and seventh seasons of the show before moving onto other television projects including Young Hercules and Breaker High.His big screen debut came in 2000 when he appeared in American sport drama Remember the titans with Denzel Washington.But it was controversial 2001 picture The Believer that caught everyone's attention.Attending a meeting held by prominent self-proclaimed fascist Curtis Zampf (Billy Zane), Danny is noticed when he proposes killing Jews as a solution to society's problems.

Danny's words create excitement not only for their racist content, but also for his articulate way of expressing himself and his knowledge of the Jewish faith.

Zampf sees potential in Danny and takes him under his wing. Working with the enigmatic extremist, Danny meets the sadomasochistic Carla (Summer Phoenix).

Between rough sexual encounters, Danny teaches Carla Hebrew and facts about Judaism. Carla becomes interested in the Jewish faith while Danny becomes disillusioned with his neo-Nazi lifestyle finding it as hypocritical as he found Judaism to be.

Haunted by his past and questioning his own beliefs, Danny finds himself a prime suspect in the assassination of a respected Jewish figure.

The film went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Roles in Murder By Number with Sandra Bullock, and The Slaughter, which was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, followed.

However it was his role in the big screen adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' novel The Notebook that cemented Gosling as an up and coming talent.

A young woman comes to the coastal town of Seabrook, North Carolina in the 1940's to spend the summer with her family.

Still in her teens, Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) meets local boy Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) at a Carnival. On the spot, Noah senses that he and Allie are meant to be together. Though she is a wealthy debutante and he a mill worker, over the course of one passionate and carefree summer in the South, the two fall deeply in love.

Circumstances, and the sudden outbreak of World War II, drive them apart, but both continue to be haunted by memories of each other.

When Noah returns home from the war years later, Allie is irrevocably gone from his life, but not from his heart.

Though Noah doesn't yet know it, Allie has come back to Seabrook, where they first fell in love. But now Allie is engaged to marry Lon (James Marsden), a wealthy soldier she met while volunteering in a GI hospital.

Decades later, a man (James Garner) reads from a faded notebook to a woman (Gena Rowlands) he regularly visits at her nursing home.

Though her memory has faded, she becomes caught up in the fiery story of Allie and Noah - and for a few moments, she is able to relive the passionate, turbulent time when they swore they'd be together always.

While the film split the critics it grossed over $115 million at the global box office and earnt Gosling a legion of female fans.

2006 release Half Nelson was to be a huge success for the young actor as his performance as teacher Dan Dunne earnt him his first, and so far only, Best Actor Academy Award nomination.

High school teacher Dan (Ryan Gosling) and quiet teenager Drey (Shareeka Epps) are two lonely souls who wander the planet looking to attach some semblance of meaning to their chaotic lives.

Dan teaches Drey in a dilapidated school in Brooklyn, New York.

Their relationship is unremarkable until Drey discovers Dan collapsed and clutching a crack pipe in a grimy toilet cubicle in the high school gym.

The film was met with critical acclaim leading to Best Actor nominations at the Screen Actors Guild Award and the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards.

His latest movie Lars and the Real Girl has also done well critically earning Gosling yet more award nominations this time at the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards and the Golden Globes.

Lars and the ReaL Girl is released 21st March

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

View the Ryan Gosling movies images.


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