12 Little-Known Facts About Ryan Gosling

Ryan Gosling didn’t have an easy time in school and struggled academically. «I didn’t feel very smart. They kept passing me in school even though I didn’t know how to do things I should have known how to do,» he told Entertainment Weekly. «Like, I couldn’t read. When you’re in class and you can’t read and everyone else can, it’s pretty frustrating. I couldn’t absorb any of the information, so I caused trouble.»

Gosling was teased mercilessly at school. After seeing Rambo in «First Blood,» he brought the family’s steak knives to school and threw them at his classmates. «I was suspended,» he told Postmedia News. «And my parents were terrified. They thought, ‘We can’t let him watch movies that are too violent.’» For better or worse, movies played a huge role in Gosling’s life long before he contemplated acting.

Eventually, Gosling was assessed for ADHD, but was never diagnosed. His mom, Donna Gosling, refused to medicate him. Instead, she homeschooled him for a year, which he credits as a turning point in his life. «I had a great teacher, though. My mother was so good at it she became a teacher,» he told GQ. During Gosling’s acceptance speech for the Kirk Douglas Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, he explained how his mom used his love of film as a reward to get him to read and a punishment to curb his excessive swearing.