Teenage Ryan Gosling was in awe of costar Burt Reynolds in 1996’s Frankenstein and Me, and his mom made him more popular with his fellow actor.
“I was, like, 13 [or] 14. It’s complicated because I thought he took a shine to me, I thought he thought there was something special about me,” Gosling, 43, quipped on the Wednesday, May 1, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! “Then I realized I have a really beautiful mom. He was just kind of interested [and] it was like I was getting, like, a secondary shine. The real shine was for my mom.”
Gosling added, “And I was like, ‘Oh this is secondary shine.’ I wish I had found out sooner. Oh my God, she loved it, are you kidding me? Nothing happened, OK? Just say like, he just liked my [mom].”
Gosling noted that Reynolds was “friendly” to him on the set and even signed several pieces of merch.
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“He [also] gave me this off piece of advice,” the Fall Guy star told Kimmel. “He was like, ‘Let me tell you something, kid: Don’t spend your whole life stepping over diamonds to live with a cubic zirconia.’ I was like, ‘I’m 13, I don’t know what any of those things are. I don’t know what any of that is but stop looking at my mom!’”
Frankenstein and Me was one of Gosling’s earliest film roles, where he starred opposite Reynolds. While Reynolds portrayed Les Williams, Gosling played the teen character of Kenny. The Robert Tinnell-directed picture followed 12-year-old Earl Williams (Jamieson Boulanger) after finding a Frankenstein doll fall off the back of a truck, fantasizing about bringing the monster to life.
Reynolds died in September 2018 at the age of 82 after suffering a heart attack.
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Gosling, meanwhile, is very close with his mother, Donna. Gosling’s parents, who also share daughter Mandi, are divorced.
“I think like a girl, I think,” Gosling previously told The Independent in a 2018 profile. “I was literally raised by my mother and my sister. And I just feel like I wouldn’t know how to think any other way. My sister was my best friend and my hero growing up. Because I was home-schooled I didn’t have a lot of friends and I did ballet, which was always just girls. All of that had an effect on my brain.”
Gosling even brought his mother as his date to the Oscars in March, where he was up for Best Supporting Actor and performed “I’m Just Ken” live with several of his costars and legendary guitarist Slash. The actor’s longtime partner, Eva Mendes, watched the show from backstage. (Gosling and Mendes, 50, share two daughters.)
