Page 86 - SHARP September 2022

“THE DAYS ARE LIKE YEARS AND THE YEARS ARE LIKE DAYS.”
Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and especially Jean-Claude Van Damme; ask him, and Gosling will tell you the story about trying (and failing) to learn the famous Van Damme splits. So naturally the actor has always dreamed of making a true dyed-in-the-wool action flick in the tradition of that era. The biggest challenge apart from the stunts, he says, was in creating a character that incorporated everything he loved about classic male action heroes while still adding something fresh and unique. For Gosling, the twist came down to a matter of reluctance. “My character doesn’t even want to be a spy,” he laughs. “He just wants to have a normal life and by a normal guy, but he’s pulled out of prison and sucked into this.”
The character, who goes by the code name Sierra Six, gets by without the help of technology or the usual spy gadgets, instead relying purely on the strength of his ingenuity and — in the tradition of every great fictional spy — a deep reserve of snappy one-liners, each as dry as a vodka martini. He is, as Gosling describes him, “an analog hero in a digital world,” which was very much essential to the appeal. “He is very pragmatic. He has his wits, he has his human ingenuity, and he just keeps on swinging,” he says. “I love those types of characters.”
As part of the process of creating a living, breathing character for the film, Gosling worked closely with TAG Heuer to create a partnership that would help define the look and style of the man he was playing on screen. Wearing a TAG Heuer Carrera 3 throughout the film — the same timepiece he shows off in a new campaign with the watch manufacturer — helped Gosling express something about the character in an unspoken yet legible way. He learned the power of these kinds of simple costuming decisions early in his career. “When I did Half Nelson, I picked a calculator watch, because my character is a teacher. But we broke the strap and replaced it with a rubber band,” he says. “I thought, Wow, okay, this is actually an opportunity to add a layer to the character.”
It was with Drive, in 2011, that Gosling really began to embrace the possibilities of a unique timepiece in a cinematic context. In that film, Gosling played a professional wheelman with a reputation for taciturn brilliance; saying little and follow- ing a strict, meticulous plan, he was capable of pulling off jobs few thought possible. His watch became a key prop in suggesting the depth of his character’s attention to detail. “I took my watch
and I put it on the steering wheel, and I thought that was the way to suggest the character was very discerning with what he trusted and just how important time was to him,” Gosling says. “The watch became a way to communicate something about the character that I thought was very helpful.”
As the Gosling renaissance continues, there’s much more for the actor on the horizon: a space adventure from Lego Movie directors Lord and Miller, an adaptation of Donald Westlake’s novel Memory tentatively entitled The Actor, and a new movie version of the 1980s TV series The Fall Guy. He’s back in the saddle full-time now, although he has, he says, greatly enjoyed his time off, which he took mainly to spend time with his children Esmeralda, seven, and Amada, six, whom he raises with his wife of more than a decade, Eva Mendes.
“The days are like years and the years are like days,” Gosling reflects, thinking about the passage of time as he spends it balancing work and family. These days, Gosling can be found cruising around Los Angeles in his 1973 Chevrolet Malibu (the same one that appears in Drive), taking Esmeralda and Amada to local farmers’ markets, and otherwise continuing to chart the course of the next act of his career. For him, it’s all about time — how much of it you have, how much of it you have left. “Since I’ve had kids, I have been thinking a lot about time. You only have so much of it with them, and you want to make the most of it,” he says.
“You don’t want to waste it. Every second counts.”
86 SEPTEMBER 2022
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CARRERA THREE HANDS ($2,750) BY TAG HEUER