Ryan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He began his career as a child star on the Disney Channel's The Mickey Mouse Club, and went on to appear in other family entertainment programs, including Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Goosebumps. His first starring film role was as a Jewish neo-Nazi in The Believer, and he went on to star in several independent films, including Murder by Numbers, The Slaughter Rule, and The United States of Leland .Gosling gained wider recognition in 2004 with a leading role in the commercially successful romance The Notebook. For playing a drug-addicted teacher in Half Nelson, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and he next played a socially inept loner in Lars and the Real Girl. After a three-year acting hiatus, Gosling starred in the marital drama Blue Valentine. Gosling co-starred in three mainstream films in 2011, the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love, the political drama The Ides of March, and the action drama Drive, all of which were critical and commercial successes. His directorial debut, Lost River, was released to poor reviews in 2014. Greater success came to Gosling when he starred in several critically acclaimed films, including the financial satire The Big Short, and the romantic musical La La Land, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and received a second Oscar nomination. Further acclaim followed with.