Long before he became the sad-eyed muse to Derek Cianfrance, Ryan Gosling was just the thorn in Peter Jackson’s side, the actor whose “creative differences” with the director led to his much-publicized exit from The Lovely Bones and subsequent replacement by Mark Wahlberg. Although Gosling at the time denied he’d been fired, saying instead that he’d left after deciding that he simply felt he was too young to be playing a guy with a teenaged daughter—which would be perfectly reasonable—other reports were far less diplomatic, talking up Gosling as “demanding” and doing stuff like cutting his own hair and “fighting with wardrobe.” (“Peter couldn’t stand Ryan," said one source.)
Now Gosling seems to have opened up about the incident, confirming that the real reason he was let go was that he was too fat. As first hinted at in Variety, Gosling arrived on set bearded and 60 pounds overweight—a physical transformation he hadn’t discussed with the director, but which he felt was a good move for the character, saying, “I really believed he should be 210 pounds.” Jackson disagreed, and soon Gosling found himself “fat and unemployed.” Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter (in the same roundtable, coincidentally, that found Robert Duvall offering his assessment of the Stanley Kubrick oeuvre), Gosling also provided his surefire diet tip for quick weight gain: drinking melted Haagen Dazs ice cream whenever you get thirsty. Yep, that’ll do it.