"Everything You Want is on the Other Side of Fear."

Ryan Gosling and David Leitch are the star and director of The Fall Guy, the romantic-action-comedy blockbuster stunt-fest you'll see at least twice this summer. But they've also built a bond over stunt work, pain, and purpose.

- By Ben Court. Photographs by Emily Shur

It's a blue-sky March day on the New York Street back lot at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. The acrid smoke of burning rubber wafts in the air around The Fall Guy director David Leitch and star Ryan Gosling. The reported $125 million movie dropped May 3 and is loosely inspired by the '80s TV action series about stunt performers. The smoke comes from stunt driver Logan Holladay, who is behind the wheel of a 750-horsepower Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. He's spinning doughnuts around Gosling and Leitch for their Men's Health cover shoot. The actor and director seem genuinely close, having spent six months filming the movie in Australia. "Anytime they let you burn rubber and don't kick you out is a good day," quips Gosling.

The 43-year-old Canadian still has the glow from another good day, when he performed his epic rendition of "I'm Just Ken" at the Oscars a week earlier. The three-time Oscar nominee (Half Nelson, La La Land, Barbie) gives off a pensive, percolating vibe-part chess grand master, part mime-with twinkling blue eyes and smile-smirk-simmer variations for days. The Mouseketeers alum says his appreciation of stunt performers dates back to playing Young Hercules as a 17-year-old. He jokes he's had stunt doubles doing his hard work ever since. In The Fall Guy, there's an action-movie-within-anaction-movie concept, and Gosling plays Colt Seavers, the stunt double to that movie's star, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.