Ryan Gosling jokes he was “this close” to becoming another actor named Ryan Reynolds after Burt Reynolds tried to date his mother, Donna.
The Fall Guy star explained the whole thing during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Gosling said he worked with Reynolds on his first feature film when he was around 13 years old, and thought he was hitting it off with the legendary actor because they spent quite a bit of time together. As it turns out, Reynolds had his eye on Gosling’s mom instead.
“It’s complicated,” he says of his time with Reynolds. “Because I thought he took a shine to me. I thought he thought there was something special about me. And then I realized that I have a really beautiful mom.”
“He was just kind of interested,” Gosling continues. “It was like I was getting like a secondary shine. The real shine was for my mom. And I was like, ‘Oh, this is secondary shine.'”
Did Ryan Goslin’s Mom Date Burt Reynolds?
The Notebook actor admitted that his mom was flattered, but nothing ever happened between Reynolds and Donna. However, Kimmel was quick to point out that he could have shared a name with another famous Canadian actor had things gone differently.
“You could have been Ryan Reynolds on the acting scene had that worked out,” the host jokes.
“This close,” Gosling says with a laugh.
Ryan Gosling’s New Movie Features a Song from Blake Shelton
Gosling was on the show to promote his new movie The Fall Guy, which is loosely based on the 1980s television show of the same name. The original show had a theme song called “Unknown Stuntman,” which Blake Shelton re-recorded for the film. The song plays in the closing credits.
“I probably loved the song even more than I knew the TV show,” Shelton says of his recording. “…It’s like a bucket list thing for me. I didn’t even know who was in the movie or anything. I just said, ‘I wanna do the song.'”
The Fall Guy exploded into theaters on Friday, May 3.
