Ryan Gosling in the film Drive. Publicity image.
British journalist Laurie Penny tweeted that actor Ryan Gosling (check out this blog) had saved her from walking in front of a car. But she didn’t expect the reaction she got. The journalist, who writes for The New Statesman, The Independent, The Guardian and Al-Jazeera, stepped out onto 6th Avenue in New York, and was looking the other way; not to mention the fact that she was wearing a pink wig; when Mr Gosling shouted “Hey, watch out!” and grabbed her from the path of an oncoming taxi. The actor has shown heroic prowess before – he once broke up a fight in New York.
“I literally, LITERALLY just got saved from a car by Ryan Gosling. That actually just happened,” Laurie Penny wrote on Twitter.
No damsel in distress. Penny wrote in The Independent that she “assumed that this sort of thing happened regularly in New York, because every day here feels a bit like living on a film set.” A famous actor once gave her a cigarette, for instance. But really, when she woke up to stories about Gosling the life saver splashed all across the American media, she thought it was “final proof that America has gone mad, lost all sense of perspective, and badly needs to be rescued from itself – possibly not by Ryan Gosling, decent and upstanding chap though he undoubtedly is.” She also resented being portrayed as a simpering damsel in distress.
“With great handsomeness comes great responsibility. In his ongoing quest to clean up the streets of New York, one fist fight and vehicular manslaughter at a time, Ryan Gosling has now saved a woman’s life,” wrote Entertainment Weekly.
America’s lost its reason. Penny added on Gawker that “Everybody needs to calm down about Ryan Gosling saving me from a speeding car.” She’s very grateful to to excellent Gosling, but what about war with Iran? What about having Rick Santorum as a presidential candidate? “The real heroes I’ve met in America are risking everything to make sure that the United States doesn’t slide further into bigotry, inequality and violence whilst everyone is distracted by the everyday doings of celebrities.”
Watch Ryan Gosling break up a fight!