Fresh from its triumph at the Golden Globes this weekend, award winner Ryan Gosling and his La La Land co-star Emma Stone have a lot to smile about as their film waltzes into UK cinemas. The actor has an incredible few years behind and ahead of him, with The Nice Guys being one of last year’s very best films. His work with Nicholas Winding Refn showed a side to the former Disney Channel jazz-hander that was very interesting, and we’ll see him later this year in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049.

His turn in Damien Chazelle’s film is, along with that of his co-star Emma Stone, one of the most delightful performances of the past few years. The sheer joy of the world of La La Land is infectious. Though, as we found out from this interview with Gosling, it was a tough, often daunting experience. Hayley Donaghy sat down with the actor to talk about the film.

La La Land Ryan GoslingGosling talks about coming back to dancing after his Disney channel years, how he considered a movie of this sort to be a thing of the past and his time with John Legend and the Jazz club band. He also mentions a key sequence which ended up on much of the promotional material for the film – the dance sequence on the hill. He details the trouble they had shooting that scene, how it had to be done in the perfect light. There is also talk of Gosling’s musical future – and whether we’ll see any more music from him.

He is candid about how close he came to giving up as an actor, and how he’s had more luck in his life than his character in this film. He describes La La Land as a movie made for people who don’t usually like musicals, and that they all wanted it to work as a musical but also as a film.

You can read our thoughts on the film here, we also spoke to Emma Stone, and the director Damien Chazelle about the journey to La La Land, as well as the new Neil Armstrong film he is making with Gosling.

Ryan Gosling La La Land Interview

Interviews from Toronto & London Film Festivals