In 2015, acclaimed film journalist Hubert Cohen offered one of the most intriguing and disturbing statements about movies uttered since Maxim Gorky’s 1896 “Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows” — with some paraphrasing, Cohen claimed that Ryan Gosling was the final movie star.

He explained that acting used to be an unrepeatable dance of charisma that gradually got lost to the realism of the person next door — that actors today are meant to be empathetically awkward, gorgeous people. But Audrey Hepburn, Marlon Brando, and Gosling are not; their levels of charisma and perfection breach “human,” finding hybridizations of recognizable beauty standards yet divine and inaccessible charm (for better or worse).

So, is it reasonable to claim that Gosling is the last movie star? What is it about Gosling that concocts that level of praise, and how does it impact the movies he’s in? This is an investigative list that doesn’t exactly order his performances but offers a unique ranking: how good are these movies themselves, and how much does these movies’ quality have to do with Gosling’s universally comforting mystique?

Until Barbie, Gosling was certainly not known for making box office hits, but he was a star who took on a variety of interesting parts across genres. His role as Ken in Barbie was a bold one, but one audiences warmly responded to and earned him his third Oscar nomination. Here's a closer look at Gosling's filmography and his best films, ranked.

Update February 3, 2024: In honor of Ryan Gosling getting nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Ken in Barbie at the 96th Academy Awards, this article has been updated with even more great films Gosling has been in and where you can stream each title.

15 The Big Short (2015)

Given this is clearly divulged from the investigation of Gosling as the last movie star, even exceeding puff piece terrain into accidental Cultland, USA, it’s a pleasure to say that The Big Short uses Gosling’s appeal as more of a cameo and not as its front page — that the movie's position here is because it’s that outstanding. Trying to depict to moviegoers the fifty Beamer pileup that caused The Great Recession would have been one task, trying to depict the financial intricacies between Wall Street and poor homeowners would have been a greater one, but trying to depict the economists who predicted that the housing market’s illegitimate loan grading system could be a lucrative exploit against the collapse of the world economy was like asking an astronomer to explain neutron stars to a hungry toddler.

What Makes Gosling's Display in The Big Short a Success?

For Adam McKay to pivot from Anchorman and Step Brothers to Capitalism 101 was a dazzling and maybe even dire move — using Gosling's future Barbie co-star Margot Robbie in a bubble bath to strangle audience members until they swallowed even a drop of the medicine. Gosling’s barely there as a douchey executive with strains of racism and monsoons of classism; this movie’s here because it rocks, and Gosling's display is all that McKay wanted it to be. Stream on Paramount+

14 Murder By Numbers (2002)

Ryan Gosling has played around with many different types of roles in his entire career, and the early 2000s Murder By Numbers is a prime example of that. He is as comfortable playing a sinister lowlife as he is playing a dreamy prince charming. What's more, in both types of roles, he takes full advantage of his magnetism to give the characters more nuance and make the audience's heart beat faster. Be it in giddy excitement or in terror.

How Gosling's Performance as a Homicidal Antagonist is so Very Chilling

In Murder By Numbers, he smoothly transitions himself into a high-school student named Richard Haywood, who, along with his classmate Justin Pendleton, played by Michael Pitt, gets accused of murdering a woman. Gosling's perfect portrayal of a charming monster-in-the-making chilled people to the bones, and his cat-and-mouse battle of wits with the tenacious homicide detective, played by Sandra Bullock, earned positive remarks on his acting in this movie based on a true story. Rent on Apple TV+

Related: Ghost Rider: Why Ryan Gosling is the Perfect Choice For the MCU

13 Only God Forgives (2013)

Drive's success led Ryan Gosling to another collaboration with Nicolas Winding Refn in Only God Forgives. This darker thriller set across Bangkok acts as a dedication to Alejandro Jodorowsky. With Refn's original script, it portrays a much harsher, rough-around-the-edges and violent depiction of gangster life. Gosling plays the character of Julian Thompson, a drug smuggler who, pushed by his mother, gets thrown into the pursuit of the ones responsible for his brother's murder.

Gosling Excels in this Contemplative Art House Flick

The movie shows the strange monotony of life that even people who live around hyper-violence face. Ryan Gosling turns in a very convincing performance as Julian, as the character shows a vague yet inescapable numbness throughout the movie that gets emphasized by his expressions as an almost mute character in the place of an overabundance of dialogue. Stream on Prime

12 The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

From Derek Cianfrance of Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines is a generational tale about the sins of our fathers. Gosling is a bank robber, Bradley Cooper a cop trying not to collapse into imminent corruption and prejudice, their stories intersecting as one would expect. But when their sons become acquainted at school, the desire to recreate their blueprints comes full circle.

How A Place Beyond the Pines is One of His Best Movies

The Places Beyond the Pines is a triumph on a series of performance levels, but placing Gosling as the tattooed face of crime facilitates a hard lesson that crime is, for a rare few, a desired life and, for most, a demand for economic inequality and over-policing. That celebrated kindness of Gosling’s eyes is a necessity in order to pierce through audience prejudice about the stereotypical facial tattoos and bleached hair — Pines knows we’d empathize with most quality actors no matter what, but for Gosling, we’ll champion those painful realities. Stream on Starz

11 Half Nelson (2006)

Directed by Captain Marvel director Ryan Fleck, 2006's self-conscious indie flick Half Nelson is a seriously underrated movie that concerns disillusioned, alcoholic, drug-addicted teacher Dan Dunne (Gosling). Considered somewhat of a maverick, Dunne, a history teacher, forms an unlikely bond with a student who, like him, has her own troubles.

How Gosling's Display is Understated but so Effective

Dan Dunne is a teacher we all wish we could've had at school, which speaks volumes about the uninspiring standard of teaching at Western state schools, and Gosling's performance as this surprisingly well-maintained junkie imbues this organic loneliness that makes his character such an intriguing personality. While Fleck and co-writer Anna Boden brilliantly write the film's titular protagonist, Gosling delivers a performance that was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award and that sensitively balances a man's hardships with his desire to do better for himself and for those around him. Stream on Peacock

10 Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

Lars and the Real Girl tells one of the most bizarrely amusing yet compelling stories in recent cinematic history. Although extremely outlandish at first glance, a deeper dive into the movie shows how different people deal with their traumas and situations differently and how positive support goes a long way to heal them from said situations better. Ryan Gosling plays a very shy Lars, who struggles to even make friends or hold conversations properly. His family, worried about him, is pleasantly surprised when he states that he is seeing someone he met on the Internet, although it quickly becomes apparent that this "woman" is actually a life-sized doll.

Why Ryan Gosling's Performance in Lars and the Real Girl is Incredibly Charming

This is a tender, open, and charming movie that shows perfectly how you do not need to understand everyone's way of coping as long as you can support them positively and make their struggles easier. Ryan Gosling showed his range of acting capabilities tremendously by convincingly portraying the awkward character in what is one of his most underrated movies to date. His goofy facial hair, nerdy jumpers, and unassuming, painfully stiff propensities are so incredibly likable, allowing Lars and the Real Girl to possess a real soulfulness. Rent on Apple TV+ and Prime

9 The Notebook (2004)

The Notebook changed Gosling's entire career. Overnight, he went from being a relatively no-name with a few notable credits like Young Hercules or Remember the Titans to a heartthrob with more potency than a sex symbol: somebody you want to grow old with as your brain curdles with dementia. From the start of the movie, Gosling’s character Noah certainly comes on Rachel McAdams’ Allie a little too strong, threatening suicide if she doesn’t date him, as most 17-year-old boys ought to do. He then writes to her daily for a year with no responses, which, while not being Allie’s intentions, would still be grounds for a deserved and emotionally restorative restraining order. Then, he builds her a house as she prepares for her wedding to a successful lawyer. In any other world and with almost any other actor, The Notebook would be a Southern Taxi Driver, but only with Gosling’s kind eyes and terrific bone structure, the delirious demands of seemingly unreciprocated advances read as sincere and not sin.

How The Notebook and Ryan Gosling Complement One Another

This authentic, unadulterated feeling is executed so emotively by Gosling, whose grasp of portraying love as this almost tangible feeling is The Notebook's driving force. This romance would not work without his charisma, and the film launched him into a new level of stardom. Yet instead of falling back on his looks and starring in a series of rom-coms, he decided to pivot to far more dramatic roles that would test his skills as an actor. The Notebook in an important moment in his career, one he used to parlay into greater projects. The fact that The Notebook still endures 20 years later as a timeless romantic classic speaks to the power of the film and his performance. Stream on Max

8 Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

This entire epic is about the intersection between cold robotics and warm humanity — how those ideas not only coexist but can occupy the same spirit. Set 30 years after Ridley Scott’s iconic Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049 proposes that prior to his death, the Steve Jobs of Susan Calvins—Eldon Tyrell—created an android capable of procreation with a human: the final move from building to birthing, cogs to cognition, ecto to endo. Gosling is KD6-3.7, or K, a replicant blade runner who sets out to kill rogue replicants and gradually learns there may be more to his humanity than a facade.

Gosling Steps Into One of the Greatest Sci-Fi Films of All Time

For Denis Villeneuve to have Gosling play K wasn’t just smart to the success of the film; it was a casting opus; every incredible detail that works in 2049 works around Gosling’s soft stoicism. The alienness of neon L.A., the nostalgia of desecrated San Diego, the legacy of lonely Las Vegas — all those worlds can be explored by Gosling with the audience feeling “he may have been here before” because Gosling is inherently capable of both friendly presence and outsider distance. He may be the only actor capable of it—a dance truly unrepeatable and unique in a world of film actors that exist dichotomously as either human or artwork—rejecting the traditional hybridization expected upon reaching celebrity. Rent on Apple TV+

7 La La Land (2016)

One of the defining films of 2016 and the 2010s, Damien Chazelle's all-singing, all-dancing La La Land stole the hearts of critics and audiences alike, with the film centering around the budding romance of protagonists Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Gosling) in 1950s Los Angeles. Having featured opposite each other in 2011's Crazy, Stupid, Love, the pair reignited their on-screen chemistry flame as they strutted and harmonized their way through the streets of Downtown LA.

How La La Land is a Musical for the Ages

This movie plays so deeply into the mystique of Gosling that it contends in a Dune-esque foreign-savior fashion that Gosling’s Sebastian is the one true white man who will save jazz. With Gosling’s charm, what was underneath a clear appropriation became so disguised with earnest fanaticism and appreciation for the music that the film became a true worldwide box office hit, grossing $472 million worldwide and earned Gosling another Oscar nomination for Best Actor. While he did not win and La La Land did not win Best Picture, the film has become a beloved favorite and certainly a high mark in his career. Rent on Prime

6 Blue Valentine (2010)

Blue Valentine looks at Dean (Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) between their times of courtship and separation. Ultimately, the “love sometimes doesn’t work in the end” movie has been done well and repeatedly, but the niche of this one is that love sometimes doesn’t work at any point, and yet you stay together for warmth.

Blue Valentine's Encapsulation of Substance Abuse Includes a Fine Gosling Display

Blue Valentine’s characters are banally cruel to one another out of carelessness, not malice, and while there are often somewhat sexist readings of this film that claim Dean was not supported adequately through a substance use disorder, was mistreated and left in the cold by his wife, etc., Dean’s reciprocated harm should be recognized not by how Dean maneuvers (seemingly with Gosling charm), but what he does (allowing his quaking jealousy to smother Cindy). The magic of Blue Valentine is that plenty of couples have the obvious villain and the hidden one, and Gosling’s allure is perfectly utilized as the mask that many real partners use to hide their meanness as well. Stream on Max

5 Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

This movie knew what to do. Steve Carell is the 40-Year-Old Near-Virgin coming out of a divorce from his high school sweetheart with no comprehension of mating rituals; Gosling is the Rembrandt of sex, agreeing to My Fair Lady Carrell into bigger and brighter beds. The twist is that Gosling has a love interest (Emma Stone) for whom he is once again foreign to romance — only knowing how to be perfect and not a fellow human (Stone gawks in frustration and refers to his body as “photoshopped”). Crazy, Stupid, Love’s fun, and Gosling’s only one cog in it, but it knew how to use him well both as the Miyagi and the Kid.

A Deeply Likable Gosling Displays Hidden Depth

The Barbie star is in radiant form as this arrogant, immaculately maintained sex guru, with his pristine style, made-to-measure suits, and smarmy nature. Despite his character's insufferable over-confidence, Gosling brings such a likability to Jacob. Crazy Stupid Love, on the surface, might be just another romantic comedy, but it is such a sweet, caring, complex love story that audiences keep discovering it and enjoying it. Stream on Apple TV+ and Prime

4 First Man (2018)

Damien Chazelle’s box office flop, First Man, shot for the stars and landed on the moon with its detailed portrait of 1969’s Moon Landings and the life and times of its most prominent name, Neil Armstrong. A film that offers not only an in-depth exploration of this remarkable feat of human engineering and effort but also the grief-stricken man at the mission’s very epicenter.

How Gosling's Performance as Neil Armstrong is Captivating

Ryan Gosling cuts an emotionless, often detached figure as Neil Armstrong reincarnates. There’s a blankness to his expression, a glaze over his eyes, permanently scarred by the loss of his young daughter but never overawed by the magnitude of the expedition at hand. Many read this as Gosling falling back on his old tricks and the blank stare of Drive, but there was so much more to the performance, and it was a much more subtle, nuanced take. Gosling encapsulates the very essence of this fascinating historical name in mind and body and this constant state of being absorbed by the vastness of space and time. Gosling should have been nominated for Best Actor for this role and was sadly overlooked. Rent on Apple TV+

3 The Nice Guys (2016)

The universal agreement about The Nice Guys is that it’s a fun movie about 1970s L.A. with an all-time great comedic turn by Ryan Gosling in his funniest movie. Much of Gosling’s impact here is in his juxtapositions with Russell Crowe, his “partner,” and Angourie Rice, his daughter: Crowe’s muscles mold Gosling into the penetrable brains of the operation, Rice’s intelligence remold Gosling into being just penetrable.

Related: Ryan Gosling’s Best Movies, According to Rotten Tomatoes Score

A Comical Masterclass

The hilarious uncoolness of Gosling’s character against the inherent coolness of Gosling himself makes for a great comedic contrast. His incredible over-the-top scream and buffoonery make both the film and his display a buoyant delight. Flitting between moments of inspired genius before normality resumes again and his character's eccentric idiocy comes to the fore, Gosling proves his worth as this versatile comedy-meets-action star. The Nice Guys was one of the best movies of 2016 and is a movie fans still want to see a sequel. Stream on Netflix

2 Barbie (2023)

Greta Gerwig unleashed her characteristically cutting satire on this eagerly anticipated comedy-drama about the most renowned children’s doll ever created. 2023’s Barbie smashed box office records, becoming one of the quickest films to reach the $1 billion landmark. This social commentary plays on the juxtaposition of Barbie Land and the real world and the transition Barbie and Ken make into the patriarchy that is human society. While reduced to a supporting role, such is Ken’s backseat existence in Barbie’s life, Gosling excels as this dim-witted, substance-lacking, plasticine doll.

Why Gosling Was Perfectly Cast as Ken in Gerwig's Barbie

With the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Gosling occupying the role of Barbie’s needy lover-boy, Ken, he certainly proves emphatically that he’s very much Kenough when it concerns his dexterity as an actor and, more pertinently, as one with supreme comedic timing. While many might have written off Gosling's casting at first, he certainly stole the show with one of the funniest performances of his entire career and also one of the funniest of all time. Gosling fully commits to the himbo motif while also giving Ken a great deal of depth that audiences can't help but feel a little sorry for him. From the look to iconic lines and the hit song "I'm Just Ken," this is a role that will largely define Gosling's career going forward as he made an instantly iconic movie character that will be replicated for Halloween costumes and quoted for years to come. He certainly deserves the Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and even the win. Stream on Max

1 Drive (2011)

As a director, Nicolas Winding Refn has made a name for disregarding the line between beauty and gore, contending that the two aren’t opposites but capable of aiding one another — beauty is an alien mystery, both in its incomprehensibility and horror. This fluorescent luminescent picture, with its neon-infused aesthetic, is visually stunning and simultaneously an ice-cold story of a stunt-turned-getaway driver. It’s important to note, as many critics have, that the brutality of Drive is never for shock value but to appreciate that the romanticism of misdeeds and ruggedness can’t censor the most electric moments, making this brilliant picture one of the best movies about getaway driving of all time.

How Drive was the Perfect Canvas for Gosling to Portray a Laconic, Brooding Character

Having Gosling and Refn bringing the Driver to life was the smartest pairing the production could’ve done, Gosling’s Under the Skin-like, clinical demure breathing warm life into that thesis. 2011 was a big year for Gosling, as both this and Crazy Stupid Love would define his on-screen persona. While Crazy Stupid Love showed him as one of the most attractive leading men, Drive showed he was an intense, serious performer who could do more with a look than most actors could do with a page of dialogue. While the "silent, intense" Gosling role might be a joke now, in 2011, when Drive came out, it was something to behold. While a modest hit at the time, Drive has only grown in esteem among film fans and was one of the best movies of 2011 but Gosling's best performance. While he sadly went overlooked at the Academy Awards, it is one that has stood out in audiences' minds. Rent on Prime