Ryan Thomas Gosling (born November 12, 1980) is a Canadian actor and musician. He began his career as a child star on the Disney Channel's The Mickey Mouse Club (1993–1995), and went on to appear in other family entertainment programs, including Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1995) and Goosebumps (1996). His first starring film role was as a Jewish neo-Nazi in The Believer (2001), and he went on to star in several independent films, including Murder by Numbers (2002), The Slaughter Rule (2002), and The United States of Leland (2003). Gosling gained wider recognition in 2004 with a leading role in the commercially successful romance The Notebook. For playing a drug-addicted teacher in Half Nelson (2006), he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and he next played a socially inept loner in Lars and the Real Girl (2007).
In August 2011, Ryan Gosling broke up a fight in the middle of a busy New York intersection, dropping his belongings on the street, managing to separate the two men while playing referring. A video of Gosling breaking up the fight went viral, although in an article posted a month later, Gosling felt embarrassed about it, stating: "I should have just kept my nose out of it."
A year later, on April 3, 2012, Ryan Gosling saved the life of a British Journalist named Laurie Penny when she was crossing 6th Avenue in a new pink wig. The woman, who was walking into the path of an oncoming Taxi, was grabbed by Gosling, who told her: "Hey, watch out!" The actor's action was not lost on bystanders, who expressed jealously over Penny’s encounter. This encounter went viral.
Gosling has supported various philanthropic and humanitarian causes. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Gosling travelled to Biloxi, Mississippi to assist in the clean-up efforts. He is also a supporter of the Enough Project and Invisible Children, which raise awareness about conflicts in African countries such as Chad, Uganda, and the eastern Congo.