14 DAY TRIAL // Ryan Gosling is one of the most popular male celebrities of recent years: he’s very talented and versatile, he’s got an impressive resume, he’s charming in interviews and in real life, and he’s very handsome (and ripped) to boot. With all that, he was never on the cover of People Magazine’s Sexiest Man issue.
This made fans rally up and protest outside of People’s headquarters on at least two separate occasions, with the uproar they caused online being several times bigger. For some reason, People still didn’t budge.
Or did they? A new report in The Wrap claims that People editors actually asked him to be on the cover several times, but he always turned them down because he considered this a sign of selling out, of compromising his art.
What the Sexiest title means for an actor
It’s true, the title offered by People Magazine doesn’t really mean anything in terms of a star’s career, especially if compared to actual awards given for acting, not just for looks and popularity.
However, appearing on the cover and inside the pages of the magazine with a spread and an interview would have offered Gosling the kind of exposure he could only dream of getting for his work. That’s not to say that the critics don’t love him, because they do – tremendously so. But being on the cover would mean that people who don’t follow indie / art house releases got their chance to hear about his work and maybe even see it.
Gosling is a huge thing online and he’s definitely earned a reputation in “serious” circles in showbiz, but he’s far from going mainstream, where the real success and the real money are. He could have gotten all that by agreeing to be on the cover.
Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Bradley Cooper, and Ben Affleck were all named People’s Sexiest at one point, and you can’t say the title did them any harm. On the contrary, it helped them boost their profile, which translated into more and better movie offers and countless more fans.
Ryan Gosling is too serious for this kind of nonsense
Count on Ryan to refuse to make what he perceives as a compromise. The report notes that editors with the mag sought him out in 2011, which was the year he was nominated for an Oscar in “Blue Valentine,” when he got the most media attention.
The opportunity would have been perfect, but he turned it down. “The consensus was he's too serious for it, too artsy,” says a source familiar with the situation. So yes, Ryan thinks he’s above this kind of silliness, which doesn’t hurt the fans and definitely wouldn’t have hurt his career.
Should he ever change his mind, he’ll be making millions of fans across the world happy. Until then, we have his hilarious memes to keep us entertained. Check out some of them in the gallery.
In case you were wondering, this year’s Sexiest Man Alive is Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, whom you probably know best as Thor, the God of Thunder, in Marvel’s superhero cinematic universe.
