Ryan Gosling: Hollywood's finest : the biography

Acclaimed for his good look as much as his searing acting ability, Canadian actor Ryan Gosling first came to attention, aged 12, after beating 15,000 hopefuls to become a Mouseketeer in Disneys Mickey Mouse Club, alongside Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake.

After the show ended, Ryan spent his teenage years acting in over 50 episodes on television, before landing the lead role in the TV show Young Hercules.Wanting to move into film, he made his feature debut in Remember the Titans, a successful Denzel Washington vehicle.

He then found acclaim playing a Jewish Nazi in the controversial, independent film The Believer, which opened the door to a major role alongside Sandra Bullock in the thriller Murder By Numbers.Everything clicked with the 2004 box office hit The Notebook; it was a film so romantic that Ryan and co-star, Rachel McAdams, ended up falling in love off-screen as well.

The film turned Ryan into a Hollywood pin-up, and in the wake of its success he famously spent several months working in a Los Angeles sandwich shop, to regain a sense of perspective.Since then, he has played one challenging role after another, including a suicideal young man (Stay), a drug addict school teacher (Half Nelson), an alienated man whose meaningful relationship is with a blow up doll (Lars and The Real Girl), while inching towards mainstream success with acclaimed performances in films like Blue Valentine, Drive, Crazy Stupid Love and Gangster Squad.

Age 32, he is now poised to become a major movie star.Enigmatic and humble, with a legendary compulsion to lose himself in very role he takes on, this is the story of an actor who is incredibly close to his mother, plays in a band, co-owns a Moroccan restaurant in Beverly Hill, laughs off those who tag him a sex symbol and who shoulder shrugs at the widespread conviction that hes this generations Marlon Brando.