Living in Ken’s World
SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 13: Ryan Gosling attends Santa Barbara International Film Festival's Kirk Douglas Award Honoring Ryan Gosling at The Ritz Carlton Bacara on January 13, 2024 in Santa Barbara, California. (Photo by Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images for Santa Barbara International Film Festival)
SBIFF salutes award-winning actor Ryan Gosling
Words by Josef Woodard | Photo by Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images for Santa Barbara International Film Festival
As Ryan Gosling was lavishly toasted in the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s annual Kirk Douglas Award black tie gala and dinner at the Bacara Resort, his range as an actor was duly praised. The sold-out ballroom was treated to homages and clips from his work so far, from his romcom charm in La La Land and Crazy Stupid Love to the cool grit of Half Nelson, The Place Beyond the Pines, and Drive.
Diversity aside, however, Gosling’s current status is mainly the result of one big-screen moment in 2023: He was Ken.
Gosling’s nuanced and loopy comic performance as Ken in the Greta Gerwig–directed summer blockbuster Barbie brought new accolades to the already respected actor. At the Bacara, Roger Durling, longstanding executive director of SBIFF, introduced the iridescently dressed Gerwig to the stage, saying, “Thanks for unleashing the Ken-ergy. Ryan is pitch-perfect in Barbie.” During her introduction, Gerwig praised the actor. “I had written the part for Ryan,” she said, “and there would be no Barbie if he hadn’t come to be our Ken.”
She also drew a parallel between the screen work of Douglas and Gosling. “My theory about Kirk Douglas and Ryan is that they both commit in such a way to characters in all their beauty and their ugliness, because they are actors and people who believe that redemption is possible.”
The Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film, linked to the late actor and longtime Santa Barbara resident, is a pre-festival part of SBIFF’s programming puzzle as a fundraiser for its robust educational program. Past Bacara-bound recipients include Michelle Yeoh, Martin Scorsese, Hugh Jackman, Quentin Tarantino, and Robert DeNiro.
In an earlier speech, Steve Carrell, who worked with Gosling in Crazy Stupid Love, noted the actor’s kind nature and positive attributes and wryly added, “Why do I hate him? Some people find him moderately handsome. I’m not one of them.” Eventually Carrell admitted Gosling “is smart and intuitive and funny. He’s a joy to be around, and most of all — and this is a big one for me — he’s kind. Santa Barbara, you actually got this one very right.”
In his acceptance speech, Gosling, donning a dark suit and tousled hair, said, “If I knew that Steve and Greta were going to be this great… I would have suggested I open and they close.” Honoring the award’s namesake, he noted that Douglas “is completely and utterly in a class of his own… and I’m just Ken.” After a speech steeped in tales from his cinema-loving upbringing in Canada and his mother’s guidance, Gosling asserted, “There is no way I have contributed half as much to cinema as cinema has given to me.”
Cinema again fully descends on Santa Barbara as SBIFF’s 37th annual festival runs February 7 to 17, in the warm-up zone for the Oscars.
