Ryan Gosling Realized He Had a Fear of Heights Filming ‘The Fall Guy’: ‘My Body Turns to Stone’

Samantha Bergeson
·3 min read
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It took playing a stunt actor for Oscar-nominated star Ryan Gosling to realize his own phobias mid-stunt scene.

While leading “The Fall Guy” as stunt actor Colt, Gosling revealed to WSJ Magazine that he can now understand the physical toll of performing action sequences.

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“You can’t breathe or the wind is knocked out of you, or you’re seeing stars or you’re kind of blacking out,” Gosling said. There was even one moment while filming his drop from a ledge into an atrium where Gosling almost couldn’t move.

“My body turns to stone,” he recalled of the moment on set. “I think it’s happened when I had kids — really, you start to be way more conscious of everything you do and everything you’ve ever done and everything you will do if you get a chance to do it.”

Yet that doesn’t mean that Gosling is ready to hang up his hat as Colt — or even stop doing some of his own stunts.

“We already know exactly what the sequel is,” Gosling said of a possible “The Fall Guy” follow-up. “We, just for ourselves, wanted to know what happened to these characters. I hope that the audience wants to see it.”

“The Fall Guy” producer Kelly McCormick recently told IndieWire’s Kate Erbland that a “Fall Guy” franchise is certainly on the table, in part due to Gosling’s dedication to the role.

“We never go in saying [we want to make this a franchise], because we are scared always and so many things can get in the way,” McCormick said. “Everybody wants another ‘Atomic Blonde,’ everybody wants another ‘Hobbs and Shaw,’ but there’s so many other things that sometimes happen that you have no control over. We are always like, ‘Well, let’s just do this one.’ Ryan really connects with this character. I think you can tell he wanted to have fun and he wanted to use, as David says, all the paintbrushes in a toolbox. He was on from pitch phase.”

McCormick continued, “He and David are always [wanting] more and more, [thinking about] what would the audience want to see? What would we want to see? They created this character that I don’t think [Ryan] wants out of.”

As for Gosling’s recent blockbuster career resurgence culminating in his first Oscar nomination, McCormick applauded the actor/producer’s versatility.

“I really feel like he’s coming into his own,” McCormick said. “He’s such a genius, and he’s such a master, and he’s such a hard worker. He learned all of it, and he lived all of it, and it’s part of everything that he does because that’s who he is. It’s interesting, I thought a lot about Ken and I think a lot of actors would get stuck as Ken forever. I think that hopefully Colt gives Ryan an opportunity to not be Ken forever.”

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