Ryan Gosling was a wedding singer at the age of eight.
Project Hail Mary star Ryan Gosling
The Oscar-nominated actor’s uncle was an Elvis Presley impersonator, and he inspired Ryan to perform from a young age.
Appearing on The Drew Barrymore Show on Thursday (19.03.26), Ryan revealed: “So my uncle was an Elvis [Presley] impersonator.
“When I was eight, I came home one day from school, and he was bedazzling a white jumpsuit in the living room with a big eagle on the back, and I said, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘I’m gonna be Elvis for a little while.’ And he was.
“He started talking like Elvis, singing like Elvis, doing karate in the backyard.”
His uncle’s performances attracted big crowds.
Ryan – who grew up in London, Ontario, Canada – recalled: “You know, everybody in our town would come to see him perform at the mall.
“Everyone felt like they were seeing Elvis, you know, people would … they would put on a talent show in order to, like, supplement the show.
“And so, you know, like, the guy that works at the A+P is suddenly, like, doing a version of Black Velvet that would knock your socks off.”
Ryan added that watching his uncle perform as the King of Rock and Roll – who died in August 1977 aged 42 – was a “liberating experience” and he is “so grateful” to his uncle because he introduced Ryan to method acting.
When his uncle stopped performing, Ryan and his sister kept it going, and it resulted in the Project Hail Mary actor singing at weddings.
Ryan, 45, remembered: “I would get 20 bucks to sing ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ to the bride, during the garter ceremony. Like…who thought it was a good idea to bring an eight-year-old to the garter ceremony?
“I would get on my knees and sing to her … and I was like, ‘Where’s my 20 bucks?”
Aged 13, Ryan became a cast member on Disney Channel’s The All New Mickey Mouse Club – in which he acted, sang and danced on the show.
Speaking about his time on the programme from 1993 until 1995, Ryan told Variety in February 2024: “I was dancing in a little dance troupe in my hometown.
“All the girls were going to audition for the show, and I went too, and somehow I ended up in a trailer park in Kissimmee, Florida, shooting The Mickey Mouse Club for two years.
“Working for Disney and on that show, it trains you to be professional. Everyone on that show, besides myself, was some kind of child prodigy.
“But I also think that they, in that experience, really taught everybody a work ethic or something that helped going forward.”
