10 Child Actors Who Reinvented Themselves With Very Adult Roles

7. Ryan Gosling - The Believer

Fireworks PicturesFireworks PicturesNowadays, it's hard for us to think of Ryan Gosling as anything other than a totally serious adult actor. You might be tempted to think of him as just sprouting up, fully grown, complete with an idiosyncratic accent and an overblown sense of his own abilities. But when he was a kid, he was a veteran of The Mickey Mouse Club, a sort of factory for child actors/singers in the 1990s, and he suffered just as much from the Disney branding as anyone else. When he was 21, he made a huge impression on audiences by starring in the film The Believer, an indie drama about a Jewish neo-Nazi. Now, that's about as far from the Disney image as you can get, and that was undoubtedly an intentional move. Over the span of two years, he goes from projects like Young Hercules and Remember the Titans, to these kind of intense psychological dramas. It was like ripping off a bandaid in terms of getting people to take him seriously -- you do it all at once and it doesn't hurt as much. Because once you show up as a Jewish anti-Semite in a film, you're in the dramatic actor category pretty much immediately, with your goofy child star past all but forgotten.
Contributor
Contributor

Audrey Fox is an ex-film student, which means that she prefers to spend her days in the dark, watching movies and pondering the director's use of diegetic sound. She currently works as an entertainment writer, joyfully rambling about all things film and television related. Add her on Twitter at @audonamission and check out her film blog at 1001moviesandbeyond.com.