If anyone can breeze through the Hollywood audition process, Ryan Gosling must be the man, right? It turns out, it was a struggle even for him.

Gosling has revealed that his experience as a teenager trying to crack the film industry was in no way glamorous, from being interrupted during a crying scene to finding out Jared Leto had already got the part.

The actor shares his thoughts with Alec Baldwin and James Toback in an upcoming documentary titled Seduced and Abandoned. Read our pick of the best anecdotes and watch the full excerpt below.

On moving to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career:

"Everyone's left their family, their homes, their friends [and] their jobs, to pursue a dream, where they know that the percentage of them achieving that dream is never and they do it anyway. Everyone has shared the same dream and no one knows whether it's a premonition or a delusion."

On not feeling special:

"You're lucky to get an audition. Then you get it, you get there [at the audition], you walk into a room full of guys that look just like you. You realise that you're not the only one that wore a cowboy hat. Then you can hear the other guy in the other room auditioning. Now you're thinking about not doing it like him as oppose to doing it the way you wanted to do it."

On crying:

"You get to the scene where you’re supposed to cry over your friend and you get the tears going and you’re emotional and then she [the casting director] gets a call and asks you to leave the room. You’re trying to keep the tears up but it’s been ten minutes ‘cause you’re waiting out there. You're trying to keep in the zone and you lose it. You come back and you want to start again but she makes you pick up where you left off."

On losing out on a role to Jared Leto:

"You hear the casting director negotiating the deal for the guy who already got the part - turns out Jared Leto already got it. Then you go in and you're just like, 'I'll do it as an acting exercise. I know I'm not going to get it; I'll just take it as an experience'."

Lucky for Ryan, he makes a great crier:

Words: Sejal Kapadia