Ryan Gosling has been a versatile actor who has dabbled in various genres. While he had his breakthrough with the romance The Notebook, the actor had branched out to drama, comedy, and sci-fi, and he was even nominated for an Oscar for his role as Ken in Barbie. One of the actor’s most recognized roles is that of Luke in The Place Beyond The Pines.
Gosling has a distinctive look in the film as he plays a bank robber in the generation-spanning drama. The actor reportedly fulfilled his dream of performing a bank heist with the film. However, the actor mentioned that shooting a heist was not as exciting as it was shown in the movies and he even took over twenty takes to make himself menacing.
Ryan Gosling Dreamt Of Planning A Bank Heist And Getting Away With It
Ryan Gosling will probably always remember The Place Beyond The Pines. Apart from being the place where he met his future partner, Eva Mendes, the film also reportedly fulfilled his dream of pulling off a bank heist. The actor reportedly had a full-fledged plan to rob a bank and get away with it but there was only one fear that stopped him.
Gosling reportedly got into the development of The Place Beyond The Pines while filming the romantic drama Blue Valentine with director Derek Cianfrance. The actor revealed to IndieWire that he was talking about his foolproof plan of robbing a bank when The Light Between The Oceans filmmaker pitched the idea for the movie.
Ryan Gosling said to IndieWire about the incident and how he got involved in the project,
“We were making ‘Blue Valentine’ and we were just talking one day and I had this cockamamie plan for how I could rob a bank and get away with it but I’m too afraid of jail, but I was pretty sure it would work and then Derek said, ‘That’s crazy, I just wrote a script about that.’ We didn’t talk about it again for years and then he finished the script.”
However, the actor mentioned that shooting the actual bank robbery was not nearly as fun as he thought it was and that he had a tough time getting some aspects of the scenes right as Cianfrance wanted to film them with a particular touch of realism.
Ryan Gosling Took 22 Takes To Get His Bank Robbery Scene Right
While Ryan Gosling had planned his dream bank robbery to the T and even believed that he would get away with it, he reportedly had a tough time shooting the scenes in The Place Beyond The Pines. The actor revealed to IndieWire that because director Derek Cianfrance wanted to shoot the sequences in a particular way, he had to really get his head in the game.
Gosling recalled how while shooting the bank robbery scene, he could not get the bank employees to be scared of him and Cianfrance was not satisfied with it. He told IndieWire,
“I’m on the counter and I’m doing it and I turn around and everyone’s smiling at me and filming me with their cell phones and I realize it’s not like how I thought it would be. And then Derek got mad at me, ‘They’re having a good time! You’re not being scary enough!’ So he made me do 22 takes trying to scare [the people playing the tellers].”
Ryan Gosling also mentioned that he did a lot more in the film than he usually did as Derek Cianfrance wanted to film a lot of the bank heists in one take. The actor said that many scenes involved him riding his bike up to the bank, performing the heist, and then escaping. The actor mentioned that certain takes were extremely difficult for him. He said,
“It required getting to the bank, getting in having the heist go off without a hitch, and then in one case in the escape there was all of these elaborate stunts organized, choreographed so that I would drive into oncoming traffic and have all of these near misses with these cars so going into the bank. I knew that 7 minutes from now, after I’ve robbed this bank I still have to drive into traffic.”
However, Ryan Gosling mentioned that it emulated what would probably take place in a real heist and hence he did not have to act much.
The Place Beyond The Pines is currently streaming on Starz on Apple TV+.
