What All Of Ryan Gosling's Exes Have Said About Him
Remember when Ryan Gosling became Tumblr's favorite imaginary boyfriend thanks to those "Hey girl" memes? On or off-screen, fans of the actor seem to view him as an ideal romantic lead, and he hasn't disappointed them with his real love life, either. Even those who never dated him seem to wish they did — who could forget Anna Kendrick's NSFW tweet about Gosling? The "Pitch Perfect" star is not one of Gosling's famous exes, and she missed the chance to shoot her shot with the actor when he began dating his "The Place Beyond the Pines" co-star Eva Mendes in 2011.
After spending a decade with her partner and welcoming two daughters, Esmeralda and Amada, Mendes found an imaginative way to keep that spark alive in 2022 when Gosling was cast as Ken in the "Barbie" movie. During an appearance on "Nightly Pop," Mendes was asked to share her thoughts on his character's look, which included bleach blond hair, a plastic-smooth tanned chest, and a pair of underwear with Ken's name on the waistband. "It's my teenage dream," Mendes said. She was so obsessed that she decided the underwear absolutely had to be a part of her Barbie world. "I do have it. I'm wearing it right now," she confessed on "The Talk." So Mendes clearly thinks Gosling is a total doll, but what have his exes said about him?
Sandra Bullock
Ryan Gosling and Sandra Bullock both have a reputation for charming movie audiences by convincingly pretending to be besotted, but when the respective stars of "The Notebook" and "The Lake House" worked together, their characters didn't make a love connection.
In the 2002 movie "Murder by Numbers," Gosling plays a twisted teen who kills for a thrill. Bullock's character is the troubled detective determined to prove the cocky culprit's guilt. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Bullock recalled how she reacted when Gosling asked if he could lick her face in one unsettling scene. "It was so disturbing and nice. I was like, 'Lick away!”' she said. A year after the thriller hit theaters, she found herself addressing rumors that she had a brief fling with Gosling. "Let me see if I can answer that politically and correctly. We're friends," she told Cosmopolitan. But this came after Bullock confessed that she finds it difficult to remain nothing more than friends with available men.
Gosling removed all doubt about their former relationship status in 2011 when he paid Bullock and another ex, Rachel McAdams, a pretty big compliment. "I had two of the greatest girlfriends of all time," he gushed to The Times (via CinemaBlend). "I haven't met anyone who could top them." By becoming Bullock's own personal guru, Gosling also left quite an impression on her. "I live my life at a manic pace, and he's taught me to disregard all that isn't important. He's like a little Buddha," Bullock told Cosmopolitan.
Kat Dennings
Ryan Gosling and Kat Dennings sent the rumor mill into overdrive in 2009 when a Twitter user spotted the "Drive" actor and the "2 Broke Girls" star together at Disneyland. There was no photographic evidence of their outing, but mere minutes after the fan tweeted about meeting them, Dennings shared a tweet of her own that read, "Got kidnapped to Disneyland today...my eyes were closed until a big flashing Mickey balloon was in front of my face. Best surprise ever." As noted by Us Weekly, Ryan Gosling would later take Blake Lively and Eva Mendes on dates to the happiest place on Earth, so the behavior tracks for the former Mouseketeer.
When MTV News asked Dennings if she was dating Gosling, she stated, "I don't know. I can't talk about my personal life." However, she did make a confession that would leave Gosling stans aghast: She hadn't yet watched "The Notebook." Said the "WandaVision" star, "I swear to God I'm the only girl alive who hasn't seen it."
While Dennings tried to deflect questions about the former Mickey Mouse Club member by offering to talk about her cat instead, one of her exes, singer Josh Groban, had something to say about Gosling after working with him on the 2011 movie "Crazy, Stupid, Love." Groban joked to Pride Source, "Listen, if I was gonna be gay, that would've been the moment. That was probably my greatest test, and I failed."
Blake Lively
Two months after Ryan Gosling and Blake Lively were spied at Disneyland in October 2010, the Daily News reported that the "Hey girl" guy and the "Gossip Girl" star had been flirting up a storm at the after-party for the "Blue Valentine" premiere. Gosling was one of the film's stars, and now-disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein reportedly had to pry him away from Lively to get him to acknowledge the existence of other guests. However, when People asked Gosling about Lively, the magazine did not get a profession of love. "She's an incredible actress; she's a good friend," he said.
It seems that Lively also decided to keep her lips sealed about the rumored romance, but Gosling did pop up on her Twitter page in 2017. She posted a photo of the actor and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, posing together, but cropped the image so all that remained of her spouse's face was a single eye, a sliver of a smile, and some stubble. Gosling fills the frame, pointing at Reynolds. "Happy birthday, baby," her tweet read. Reynolds had previously done something similar to Lively for her birthday.
Interestingly, Lively and Reynolds' wedding venue was a South Carolina plantation where Gosling filmed some scenes for "The Notebook." A few months before her 2012 nuptials, Lively told Elle, "I've had four boyfriends in my whole life. I've never been with anyone that's not a boyfriend. If I spend time with a man, it's because there's somebody that I know well who has been a friend for a while."
Rachel McAdams
According to director Nick Cassavetes, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams were more like enemies than lovers when they began filming "The Notebook" together. While reflecting on the actors' on-set animosity, Cassavetes recalled to VH1, "[Ryan is] doing a scene with Rachel and he says, 'Would you take her out of here and bring in another actress to read off camera with me?' I said, 'What?' He says, "I can't. I can't do it with her.'" Gosling's request resulted in a shouting match that somehow seemed to dispel the tension.
McAdams confirmed that the fiery onscreen passion between her character and Gosling's was totally fake. "We weren't throwing Ming vases at each other, so it wasn't loathing, but our relationship was not what you saw on the screen," she told The Times (via Independent.ie), adding that there was no way they could have predicted their real-life romance. But that chapter didn't begin until long after they'd finished telling Noah and Allie's love story. "Two years later I saw [McAdams] in New York and we started getting the idea that maybe we were wrong about each other," Gosling told The Guardian.
While Gosling wasn't a very considerate co-star at first, McAdams later praised his acting prowess. "He never does the same thing twice. He's very brave," she told Elle (via People) in 2007. The couple split in 2008 after four years of dating, but in 2016, McAdams told Yahoo! Movies that she's open to working with her ex again.
Britney Spears
Britney Spears isn't actually one of Ryan Gosling's exes, but according to Christina Aguilera, he was crushing on the "Circus" singer back when the three of them starred on "The All New Mickey Mouse Club" in the '90s. Aguilera talked about the group's romantic dynamics during the "Carpool Karaoke" segment of "The Late Late Show with James Corden," pointing out that Spears ended up dating another former Mouseketeer: Justin Timberlake.
In a 2013 interview with The Sunday Times (via Us Weekly), Gosling reminisced about spending time with Spears away from work. "Britney was a sweetheart," he said. "She lived right above me, the girl next door. The little girl I used to play basketball and spin the bottle with." When Spears appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," she clarified something about his spin-the-bottle memory. "I did that, but I didn't kiss him," Spears said, explaining that the bottle never pointed at Gosling when she spun it. It did, however, stop on Timberlake.
In 2007, Gosling told Entertainment Weekly that he used to share everything he knew about sex with Spears and Aguilera, which landed him in hot water with their moms after Spears snitched on him. "I feel somewhat responsible for how sexual she is right now. When I see her with a snake around her neck, I think, 'Did I do that?”' Gosling mused. He told ET that Spears actually screen-tested for "The Notebook," saying, "She was really good, actually, she did a really nice job."