Ryan Gosling may be insane, but that’s OK

Few actors would seem to be on their game like Ryan Gosling is these days. He’s gone from romance (THE NOTEBOOK) to drama (BLUE VALENTINE) to comedy (CRAZY STUPID LOVE) and now is heading to action (DRIVE).

But how is he handling his stardom? A new interview with Esquire has some choice quotes that say the actor might be a little…strange. So far, in a fun way, but it’s entirely possible he’s losing his mind. Maybe. Just read:

Ryan Gosling reveals: His apartment is full of skeletons. “I give them nervous systems made from Christmas lights.” He pulls out his phone, thumbs his way through his photos, and says, “Look.” It is the second floor of his apartment, and there is a skeleton, bone white and incandescent, standing, or hanging somehow in the window. “I made the table, too,” Gosling says. “From a church door.”

Time for a bathroom break during the interview…

Finally, Gosling jumps off the chair into the sand, jogs to the water, picks his way out to the end of a jetty, and appears to take a leak. He faces the huge, boatless expanse with his hands on his hips, so that from behind he might just be some guy regarding the ocean as if the whole thing were his. “I failed,” he says. “Too much pressure, even though nobody’s watching. I gotta find a john.” He zips up and turns his back on the sea.

So how was working on DRIVE?

He knows cars, having himself rebuilt the car he commanded in Drive while working at a garage in Hollywood. “It took forever,” Gosling says. “This guy Pedro would sit there and tell me what to do, but he wouldn’t touch the car. He just barked orders, and I followed them. But when we get to the transmission, he replaced the whole thing without telling me. I was angry, upset. I got all teared up. And Pedro said, ‘I just put that transmission up in there because I had to get some real jobs in here.’ I respected that, but I told him, ‘I have one chance in my life to take the time to learn this.’ “

Uh, is that a fact? Let’s move on.

“If you could create a theme park, what would your theme be?” He quarter-turns his head and waits for an answer.

It’s hard to accept that he’s really asking, that he isn’t just finding a way to turn the Q&A tables by making an excuse to unveil his own idea.He means it. He wants the answer. The notion dawns that Gosling is a seeker. He doesn’t give a sh*t what seems naive.

“I went through puberty in a theme park,” he says. He means Disney World, his stint as a Mouseketeer. “I’m grateful. That place was a landscape to me. I had adventures every day.” Gosling eats Kazoozles. He swears by them some more, then says, “My theme park would be a theme park about living in a theme park.”

Is life in a theme park a metaphor for living life as a celebrity? Maybe he’s more sane than he appears. PS: He recently broke up a “street fight” in NY, see below.