'Believer' Almost Cost Gosling 'Leland' Role                                   

By Vanessa Sibbald

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Usually starring in a film heaped with critical acclaim helps you land your next role. But in Ryan Gosling's case, it might have been a hindrance. After reading Matthew Ryan Hoge's script for "The United States of Leland," the actor found himself moved and sought out the writer-director to talk about playing the lead part of the enigmatic murderous teen, Leland P Fitzgerald. 

But Hoge, who had seen Gosling in the lauded Showtime film "The Believer," also by a first-time director, screenwriter Henry Bean, didn't think the actor who portrayed Jewish Nazi Danny Balint was right to play Leland. 

"I think it was Ryan's persistence and continually coming in and auditioning and trying to prove himself, that he could do this, that finally Matt realized what -- I think you reported it as 'What an idiot you were?'" producer Kevin Spacey laughs to Hoge. 

"Yes, thank you for reminding me what an idiot I am. But when you have an actor who's that gifted that they can do anything and that the transformation -- if you look at it still from 'The Believer' and from 'Leland,' just look at how this is an actor using every tool he has to transform himself, to give a body to unusual and possibly unlikable character, that's really great," Hoge says. 

Despite only having a couple of films to his credit, the 23-year-old actor isn't a stranger to the camera. In fact, at the age of 11, he starred with Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera as one of the members of "The All New Mickey Mouse Club" during its sixth and seventh season. He later starred in the teen TV series "Breaker High," and in the late '90s, as the title character in the "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" spin-off, "Young Hercules." But Gosling says that those days feel like another lifetime. 

"It's different. I think that what's happening now is different from what was happening then. I think I was just kind of being a kid then because I was 11," he tells Zap2it.com. 

But everything changed when he worked as an extra on 2000's "Remember the Titans, starring Denzel Washington. He was eventually given a couple lines in the film, "out of sympathy," he smiles. 

"It felt like there might be a place for me in it somewhere. And then, I found 'The Believer.' Doing that was the first time it had occurred to me that I'd actually like to make a job out of this," he says. 

"I guess I've been [acting] for a while, but I don't feel that I have. I feel very new to this," he adds. "I'm just starting out, you know. There's a long road ahead." 

"The United States of Leland" expands in theaters on Friday, April 16. Gosling can next be seen in Nick Cassavetes' "The Notebook," which opens on June 25, and "Stay," opposite Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, which is expected to hit theaters later this year.