Ryan's Dark Side

The Road To Hollywood Stardom Has Been A Rough One For Ryan Gosling, Whose Childhood Was Scarred After Being Caught In The Middle Of His Parents’ Ugly Divorce.

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GIVEN the effortlessly cool demeanor that Ryan Gosling has become famous for — both in real life and in films such as La La Land and Drive —it might leave you wondering whether or not the Hollywood superstar has had his tongue firmly in cheek during the many interviews in which he’s talked about his dramatic, out-of-control youth in his native Ontario, Canada. Claiming, among other things, that he once set the family home on fire and had a penchant for throwing the cat in the dryer, Ryan has said he “felt like I was going crazy as a kid,” and added: “There’s something messed up with my brain.”

Sadly, it seems there’s more fact than fanciful fiction behind Ryan’s stories of his troubled upbringing. He’s described the effect of the contentious divorce (finalized in 1996) between his parents, Thomas and Donna Gosling, as “everything demolished” — and court papers from that divorce, obtained exclusively by