Ryan Gosling

Often plays quiet, emotionally distant characters
Frequently works with directors Nicolas Winding Refn, Derek Cianfrance, and Damien Chazelle

Was taken out of elementary school as a child and taught at home by his mother because of constant abuse from other students.
According to an interview in GQ, he was the only Mickey Mouse Club cast member that didn't live in the same complex as all the other cast members and their families. He and his family lived in a nearby trailer park and he was the family's only source of income.
Gained 60 lbs to play Jack Salmon in The Lovely Bones (2009) by eating melted ice cream. Ultimately he was fired due to creative differences which left him, in his words, "fat and unemployed".
He played all his filmed piano-playing scenes in La La Land, learning to play the instrument in the months before shooting.
Unlike many successful actors near his age, he has no entourage and few close friends. He admits to often preferring solitude while not working, attributing it to his autonomous latter childhood.

I've learned it's important not to limit yourself. You can do whatever you really love to do, no matter what it is.
I always wanted to entertain. When I was 6, a scrawny, scrawny kid, I'd get in my red speedo and do muscle moves. I actually thought I was muscular. I didn't know everyone was laughing at me.
You know how sometimes department stores have these things where, if you win, you get 10 minutes and go in and take anything you want from the store? That's basically what I'm doing. I'm running in and just trying to grab as many characters as possible before they pull the plug on me.
It's nice to be around people that have a sense of the world around them, that are, in general, more conscious and conscientious. It was important for me to get an outside look at America even though I grew up in Canada, it's an incredible country and I love it, but it's so close. It's like being too close to a Monet or something. You have to move back. Going to New Zealand helped me to get a read on this place that the whole world was obsessed with.
I also think that something interesting comes out when you do something that you're afraid of, so I try to take things that I'm not sure that I can do. And this was certainly one of them. I didn't feel like I was right for this at all, and I wondered how to find truth in a fairy tale.