Ryan Gosling: An un-Hollywood star

He is thinking of directing now, taking a turn on the other side of the camera. Will he continue to perform as well?

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

And the satisfaction he does derive from acting, this endeavor that has won him such acclaim: “I’m sure it would be hard to articulate.”

Articulation is a funny thing. It’s one of the qualities he finds inauthentic about so many Hollywood-concocted characters. In the movies, he says, people always have the ability to say what they mean. In real life, “I think that, you know, people are always trying to say what they mean but rarely get there.”

Yeah.

Then Gosling breaks his choppy rhythm. He is responding to a question about the way he prepared for his “Half Nelson” role — moved to Brooklyn, shadowed a middle school teacher, gave himself an education in the civil rights movement he’d be teaching on screen.

And: “I did a lot of crack, you know. A lot. It was cheap, so it was no big deal — I used my per diem for it,” he says with perfect delivery.

“I’m just kidding. I didn’t get per diem.”

It’s nice to think that this is a glimpse of the genuine Gosling, the one who charms his co-stars into off-screen romances (first Sandra Bullock, then Rachel McAdams), who, during “Half Nelson,” floats effortlessly into a lyrical discourse on the capacity individuals have to effect change, who has the sense of humor to choose, for his next project, to play a guy who falls in love with a sex doll.

Incidentally, what is it that Gosling really wants out of a character?

“Really, it’s simple — just somebody I think is a real person,” he says. “The theme for me is love and the lack of it. We all want that and we don’t know how to get it, and everything we do is some kind of attempt to capture it for ourselves.

“Anyway, whatever, I’m rambling.”

That’s true, and it’s lovely to hear.

MORE FROM ENTERTAINMENT

Entertainment Section Front

Scoop: No Tiger cub on way for Rachel Uchitel   Longtime couple Sarandon, Robbins have split Report: Simon Cowell will leave ‘American Idol’ Amy Winehouse charged in assault at theater Documentary on Jackson doctor in the works Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler enters rehab Johnny Knoxville is a dad to new baby boy Boy George denied shot at reality TV gig Mary J. Blige is ‘Stronger’ than ever Sexy Dr. Watson? It’s elementary for Jude Law Entertainment Section Front   Add Entertainment headlines to your news reader: