Gosling may turn out to be the rare actor, like Jack Nicholson, who is equally both at once. Early on, though, I thought he was almost destined to be an actor first and a star second. He first came to prominence ten years ago, in The Believer (left), playing an anti-Semitic skinhead who was, in fact, a brilliant, searching, self-loathing Jewish screw-up, and Gosling gave a performance — I don’t say this lightly — that was worthy of the young De Niro. He did something that movies about sociopaths, let alone movies about young Talmudic scholars–turned–Judaism bashers, almost never do: He made the character’s belief system intellectually charged and compelling. He showed you that this violent, messed-up kid who despised his heritage was, in the depths of his rage, the only halfway reverent Jewish person in the room. (He hated the contradictions of the religion — the hypocrisy of it, in his view — because his desire to believe was so consuming.) In that single performance, a stunning screen actor was born.