Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson finally opened up about the casting decision that left Ryan Gosling “fat and unemployed.”
For Jackson’s 2010 supernatural thriller The Lovely Bones, Gosling, 45, believed he needed to put on 60 pounds to play Jack Salmon, the grieving father of murdered girl, Susie Salmon, played by Saoirse Ronan.
Jackson, 64, had “a different idea of how the character should look,” Gosling told The Hollywood Reporter soon after the film was released, and fired the then 27-year-old before production even began, replacing him with Mark Wahlberg. Fifteen years later, Jackson revealed what factored into the decision.
“Anytime we recast an actor, it’s actually our fault because we didn’t get the casting right, and we cast the wrong person for a role. It’s not because they did anything wrong,” The Lord of the Rings director told Entertainment Weekly soon after receiving an honorary Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
“So, I’m not going to talk about individuals, but you just got to realize that what you were imagining isn’t really quite happening, which means that we got it wrong, and so we take full responsibility,” he continued.
Jackson did, however, discuss Gosling’s swift departure from his Oscar-nominated film.
“Ryan is a fantastic actor, as we know. Films are a chemistry both on-camera and behind the camera. They’re chemistry in terms of what the actor conveys to the audience of the film,” he said.
“It’s just a complicated sort of amalgam of communication of how somebody gels into a group of people, into a story, into a character,” he said. “It’s complicated, and usually you try very hard when you’re planning the film, casting it, trying to get that gel kind of right, but occasionally we make our own mistakes.”
In the 2010 interview, Gosling wryly accepted fault for the misunderstanding, citing a lack of prior discussion with the director. “I really believed he should be 210 pounds. We didn’t talk very much during the preproduction process, which was the problem.”
“It was a huge movie, and there’s so many things to deal with, and he couldn’t deal with the actors individually. I just showed up on set, and I had gotten it wrong. Then I was fat and unemployed,” Gosling said, adding that he went from 150 pounds to 210 pounds after first meeting Jackson by drinking melted ice cream.
Ronan, who was 13 at the time of filming, said that she was “sad” to see Gosling depart, despite not yet having begun filming with him.
“I think I just loved Ryan. And his dog, George,” Ronan said in 2024. “And I was just sad that, you know, he wasn’t gonna be around. But I think the reasons why they parted were totally valid, and I’ve spoken to both now, and it happens. Do you know what I mean? It’s not personal, necessarily. It’s like sometimes you’re just not on the same page.”
Not all was lost for Gosling. The same year The Lovely Bones was released, Gosling starred in three films, including the acclaimed Blue Valentine with Oscar nominee Michelle Williams. Two years later, he would meet his future wife, Eva Mendes, while shooting The Place Beyond the Pines.
