Gosling Fat for Lovely Bones

The actor discusses some weighty issues.

by | October 8, 2007 | Comments

Ryan Gosling
is playing Jack Salmon in
Peter Jackson‘s
The Lovely Bones,
an adaptation of the runaway bestseller by Alice Sebold. To portray the grieving
father whose murdered daughter watches from heaven, he has already put on some
added paunch.

"This is frustrating because I gained weight for
Lars
And The Real Girl
and then I lost it and then I gained a lot of weight
again," said Gosling. "So I could have just kept it the whole time."

Gosling is preparing to shoot in Pennsylvania, though he
revealed that he will have a bit of work in New Zealand, where Jackson is
literally constructing heaven. "I work a little bit in New Zealand, but mostly I
work in Philadelphia."

It is too early for Gosling to figure out his acting
method; his commitment to character is always evident on film, but he’s still
working out the details. "It’s hard to describe when you are in it. When I’m out
of it I’ll be able to decipher what’s been happening."

He did, however, share an artistic perspective with
Jackson. "He’s fearless as a director. He takes on things that you kind of have
to be crazy to take on. To do

Lord of the Rings
you have to kind of be nuts because there is no way
you are going to win. You are always going to have naysayers and people saying
you ruined it or whatever. But he’s my kind of nuts because he doesn’t care and
he does it anyway. There are so many units and it takes him years to make it. He
doesn’t care. And he makes this movie and then he does
King Kong
. What are
you doing? Now he’s doing Lovely Bones. People have such reverence for
that book, and he’s just like, ‘I’m going to try that.’ So it’s exciting to work
with somebody like that."

The Lovely Bones will be in theaters 2008. 
Lars
And The Real Girl
, starring Gosling about a social introvert who
befriends a blow-up doll, opens this Friday in limited release.