"I cried at the end, when I read it," Gosling says. "I just thought it was so romantic—the idea that you don't need to be loved in return in order to love something or someone. Love can come from you. It doesn't have to be reciprocal. People love their cars. People love all kinds of things, and they really love them. And we don't really value that kind of love because it's not a real, reciprocal kind of love, but it's real love to them."

"You probably hear this a lot, but he was my first choice," Lars director Craig Gillespie says of Gosling. "He's got this innocence about him and this incredibly receptive face—everything in his eyes is positive and optimistic. I felt that's what Lars was."

"There was a real respect for the doll on the set," says Emily Mortimer, who plays Lars's sisterinlaw in the film. "Like, no one was allowed to make jokes about her or stick things up her nose. I mean, you can imagine the temptation, with someone or something like that around, to stick a cigarette in her mouth and put sunglasses on her, or worse. But Ryan was extremely careful with her. There was something rather amazing about that, because it was so bizarre, but very sweet, and it dictated the attitude of everybody in the movie and on the set to this thing. They gave her the same respect you would give anyone."

"I always felt rather guilty," Mortimer says. "I don't know whether I should say this, it's like I'm giving myself away, but I always felt like I was faking it with Bianca. I'd be trying to impress Ryan by paying attention to her when we weren't acting. I was pretending, trying to make him think I was cool."

Gosling's getting antsy. He needs to walk and to smoke. We end up sitting on a bus bench, at dusk, across the street from the Hollywood Royale Guest Home.

As we watch the shuffling shapes of retirees behind the shades. I ask him about something Nick Cassavetes said about him once, that he was 23 going on 63.

"That's almost insulting," Gosling says, laughing. "I liked being young. I just didn't like the idea that I couldn't be in control of my day. The fact that there were all these people that were in charge of my day was something I couldn't get my head around. It got me into a lot of trouble.

"I just wanted to have more control over my life," Gosling says. "And I thought the entertainment business, being an actor, seemed like the answer. It seemed like you make lots of money and nobody tells you what to do. I didn't realize that, with the kind of movies I was going to make, I wasn't going to make a lot of money and everyone was going to tell me what to do."

I ask him what he's going to do tonight.

"I have no idea," he says, flicking a butt into traffic. "You need a ride somewhere"

We walk back to the coffee shop, to where Gosling's black Prius is parked. Then we're bombing through Hollywood, Gosling smoking out the window, dialing up classic rock. We are somewhere on Sunset when—swear to God—"Light My Fire" comes on. It's like the ghost of Jim Morrison is haunting us, threatening to read his poetry aloud.

"Maybe," Gosling says, "we should just submit to it."

He turns the radio up. Floors it through a yellow light. Tries to set the night on fire.

Alex Pappademas is a GQ staff writer.