Stars often go above and beyond their natural capabilities to prepare for a role. Usually, these endeavors pay off but more often than not, the extra mile traveled by the actor becomes a behind-the-scenes story and, as such, remains unacknowledged by the audience. With Drive, Ryan Gosling became one such actor whose contributions behind the scenes shaped his character and his story on the screen.
However, despite his investment and efforts to prepare for the role, it is a story not commonly known and even less appreciated by the fans – a situation that needs to be remedied at all costs.
Ryan Gosling Gets His Hands Dirty For a Dangerous Role
Sure, whichever script Ryan Gosling chooses as his pick for the next project is set to be a good one – brilliant even, considering the films he has delivered for the big screens over the years since his breakout role in The Notebook. Armed with an Oscar-worthy resume, it’s no wonder that a script as rare and violently understated as Drive would catch the actor’s eye. However, it was the director’s free rein to the actor that made the film truly stand out as one of the criminally best on screen.
It has been said that director, Nicolas Winding Refn had asked Ryan Gosling to pick his car of choice for the character he would portray and embody on the screen. The latter had chosen a 1973 Chevy Malibu from an LA junkyard which he stripped down to the bare frame after it was shipped to a warehouse. There, the actor rebuilt the entire machine himself rather than hiring production engineers. This is easily detectable seeing the modified interiors of the car which could only be fitted when a car is rebuilt from scratch.
While speaking of the process, Gosling claimed that throwing himself into rebuilding the car helped get into the mind of his character and the emotions that drive him toward his end goal. The car is often spotted in the film when the Driver cruises along the LA streets at night in a cool primer-gray Chevy.
Ryan Gosling Gets To Embody the Man With No Name Hero
In every actor’s career, there comes a chance moment or opportunity that defines their body of work above the rest. But to embody a role that emulates the legendary Clint Eastwood‘s character from the 60s and 70s spaghetti Westerns directed by Sergio Leone fits into an entirely another ballpark. For Ryan Gosling, that opportunity came in the form of Driver where he emulates an anti-hero cruising night after night along a desert town while feuding with criminals and taking down baddies.
Moreover, the film remains vastly interspersed with non-verbal cues – a trait found within Man With No Name. Actions and emotions drive the plot rather than dialogue and speaking parts. Ryan Gosling gets to speak less than 120 lines in the film and Carey Mulligan, his co-star, describes most of the screen diction as staring longingly at Ryan Gosling for hours on end for most of the duration of the shoot.
Although the film remains a less talked about achievement of Gosling’s career, Drive remains his highest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes (93%), even surpassing La La Land (91%) and Blade Runner 2049 (88%).
Source: IMDb
