Ryan Gosling doesn’t want to take on roles that put him in a “dark place” for the sake of his family

Tomorrow brings the much-anticipated release of The Fall Guy. The action comedy looks like a hell of a lot of fun, and fun is the name of the game for Ryan Gosling moving forward. The actor recently told The Wall Street Journal (via THR) that he’s been avoiding taking on dark roles for the sake of his family.

“I don’t really take roles that are going to put me in some kind of dark place,” Ryan Gosling said. “This moment is what I feel like trying to read the room at home and feel like what is going to be best for all of us. The decisions I make, I make them with [wife] Eva [Mendes], and we make them with our family in mind first.” The Fall Guy star added that La La Land was the first project he took on with this new perspective.

“It was just sort of like, ‘Oh, this will be fun for them, too, because even though they’re not coming to set, we’re practicing piano every day or we’re dancing or we’re singing,’” Gosling said. “Their interest in Barbie and their disinterest in Ken was an inspiration. I thought they were already making little movies about their Barbies on the iPad when it happened, so the fact that I was going off to work to make one too, we just felt like we were aligned.“

Gosling added that he became “way more conscious of everything” once he had children, and now that he doesn’t have to take roles purely to make money, he wants to focus on passion projects. “I want to make stuff that’s inclusive, and that’s not for an audience of one,” he said. “I think for so long I was just trying to pay the bills and work. It’s only recently that I feel like I realized that I have this opportunity to actually make the kind of films that made me love movies.“

Gosling stars in The Fall Guy as Colt Seavers, “a battle-scarred stuntman who, having left the business a year earlier to focus on both his physical and mental health, is drafted back into service when the star of a mega-budget studio movie—being directed by his ex, Jody Moreno. While the film’s ruthless producer, maneuvers to keep the disappearance of star Tom Ryder a secret from the studio and the media, Colt performs the film’s most outrageous stunts while trying (with limited success) to charm his way back into Jody’s good graces. But as the mystery around the missing star deepens, Colt will find himself ensnared in a sinister, criminal plot that will push him to the edge of a fall more dangerous than any stunt.“

Our own Chris Bumbray loved The Fall Guy in his review. “The Fall Guy really is a terrific summer action movie and a throwback to a different (better) time in genre movie-making,” Bumbray wrote. “More than anything, it’s a tribute to the stunt industry and a demand that it gets the recognition it deserves, with the point made over and over that CGI action is lame and can’t hold a candle to the old ways. I’m inclined to agree.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here. The Fall Guy will hit theaters on May 3rd.