Ryan Gosling’s 10 Most Underrated Movie Performances, Ranked

It's so easy to talk about the movies Ryan Gosling has done over the course of his career. The guy is one of the biggest movie stars in the world. From The Notebook and Drive to La La Land, Blade Runner 2049, Barbie, and Project Hail Mary, his performance at the box office and with audiences is undeniable.

But between all these hits is an actor who is doing a lot of unsung and underrated work. A guy who has been grinding for a long time, putting up numbers in ovies that don't get seen all the time.

For me, this is what sets Gosling apart. He's always trying to do something out of the ordinary or testing the limits of what he can do as an actor. It's helped him take those leaps and have so many hidden gems in his filmography.

So today, let's take a look at 10 underrated Ryan Gosling performances that deserve a closer look.

10. Stay (2005) - Henry Letham

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• Director: Marc Forster
• Writer: David Benioff
• Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ryan Gosling, Naomi Watts, Bob Hoskins

Gosling has the perfect face for a thriller. It can tell you everything, or it can hold all the cards back and make you bet on his bluff. This is a riddle wrapped in an enigma as he plays an art student that a psychiatrist (Ewan McGregor) is trying to prevent from taking his own life. This is a haunted performance that tugs at what you know about the character and the preconceived notions you take on watching him.

9. The United States of Leland (2003) - Leland P. Fitzgerald

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• Director: Matthew Ryan Hoge
• Writer: Matthew Ryan Hoge
• Cast: Ryan Gosling, Don Cheadle, Chris Klein, Jena Malone

I feel like people have a different view of this movie now, but I rewatched it recently and still think this look at a moment of violence is pretty poetic. Gosling plays a soft-spoken teenager incarcerated for a shocking murder. When you say out loud what he did, you get chills, but when you meet him, he's an unassuming guy you can't imagine would hurt anyone. This is an early look at a guy you could palpably sense was a star.

8. Song to Song (2017) - BV

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• Director: Terrence Malick
• Writer: Terrence Malick
• Cast: Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman

I think every actor in Hollywood should have to work with Terrence Malick once in their careers. He makes them look good, gives them range, and allows them to try so many different ways to use their craft. Song to Song pairs Gosling with Rooney Mara as struggling songwriters entangled in a messy romantic web bleeding into their professional lives. This movie is all glances, body language, and eye contact, and Gosling is great at it. You can see him loving the freedom.

7. All Good Things (2010) - David Marks

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• Director: Andrew Jarecki
• Writers: Marcus Hinchey, Marc Smerling
• Cast: Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella, Lily Rabe

Director Andrew Jarecki has been hunting Robert Durst in both fiction and non-fiction for a long time. It all came to a head in HBO's The Jinx, but before that, you had this movie. It's loosely based on Durst's first alleged killing, where Gosling plays David Marks, a scion of a powerful New York real estate family whose boyish charm disarms people until they realize it's masking some sort of deeper anguish. And that all comes to a head when his wife goes missing, and no one knows where she might be.

6. Only God Forgives (2013) - Julian Thompson

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• Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
• Writer: Nicolas Winding Refn
• Cast: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm, Rhatha Phongam

Two years after turning Gosling into a leather-jacketed icon in Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn reunited with him for a polarizing Bangkok revenge nightmare that's a little weirder and has a lot more neon. This movie is slow, like insanely slow. There's almost no dialogue, but the style here is undeniable, and again, I like seeing Gosling trying anything a little different.

5. Fracture (2007) - Willy Beachum

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• Director: Gregory Hoblit
• Writers: Daniel Pyne, Glenn Gers
• Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, David Strathairn, Rosamund Pike

I love a courtroom thriller. And this one pits Gosling and Hopkins against each other to solve a murder. Gosling plays Willy, a sharp, slightly arrogant lawyer who is humbled when Hopkins’s character outmaneuvers him. You can kind of see a handoff in real time of older star and newer star earning each other's respect, too.

4. The Believer (2001) - Danny Balint

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• Director: Henry Bean
• Writer: Henry Bean
• Cast: Ryan Gosling, Billy Zane, Theresa Russell, Summer Phoenix

Fresh off Remember the Titans, a 20-year-old Gosling blew the doors off Sundance playing Danny Balint, a Jewish kid who becomes a neo-Nazi agitator. You laugh at dark things and then ponder how hate can be so insidious and take over someone so completely. You can see Gosling willing to try anything here. The guy takes a character and centers himself on self-loathing and anger, and filters that into a skewed worldview that is astonishing.

3. Lars and the Real Girl (2007) - Lars Lindstrom

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• Director: Craig Gillespie
• Writer: Nancy Oliver
• Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Patricia Clarkson

This was one of the best spec scripts I had ever read. It was an indie that brought some of the best actors out and let them play in a world that seemed ludicrous but had so much heart. Gosling plays every single beat with total sincerity, so you buy into the fantasy he needs and the love from his family. He treats Bianca with such dignity that the audience kind of roots for him to get what he needs from her.

2. The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) - Luke Glanton

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• Director: Derek Cianfrance
• Writers: Derek Cianfrance, Ben Coccio, Darius Marder
• Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Dane DeHaan

Derek Cianfrance’s ambitious three-part crime tragedy lets Gosling star as the central character of the first third. It's such a good role; you feel his recklessness jump off the screen. There's something so animalistic and sad about it, too. The hair and the tattoos give us the sense of a guy who is burning through all of life and not backing down. His death in the movie is very shocking.

1. First Man (2018) - Neil Armstrong

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• Director: Damien Chazelle
• Writer: Josh Singer
• Cast: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler

After the jazzy dancing of La La Land, Gosling and Damien Chazelle took a sharp left turn into outer space. Gosling plays Neil Armstrong, an engineer going through unimaginable personal grief, and letting space be what you think is a distraction. Only for it to become the ultimate way he can be close to the child he lost again, and how to let her rest. There's something extra special about Linus Sandgren’s claustrophobic 16mm cockpit cinematography; that makes all this feel visceral.

1. The Nice Guys (2016) - P.I. Holland March

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• Director: Shane Black
• Writers: Shane Black, Anthony Bagarozzi
• Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer

Even though Shane Black’s neo-noir buddy comedy bombed at the 2016 box office, Gosling’s comedic work here still deserves its flowers. This is a cult classic movie that is one of my favorites all time. I think it might be in my top 3. I just adore every frame, and I'm not sure Gosling is better in any other movie. His Abbott-and-Costello physical slapstick is pure genius. You laugh, you cry, and you see all the same signs he does, putting together this massive conspiracy in a Los Angeles so dirty you need to clean it up.

Summing It All Up

Gosling is one of those guys I would watch do anything. He knows how to hit all the emotional beats you're looking for, and he breathes life into movies that need a little resuscitation at times, while also being the best part of the big hits. His career is full of bangers and underrated gems, and it just shows us an artist who loves acting, and that love is contagious to everyone watching.