Ryan Gosling thinks about his children first when choosing movie roles. (PHOTO: Getty Images/Gallo Images)

Barbie and The Fall Guy star Ryan Gosling used to be known for his gritty and unconventional roles – a drug addict teacher in Half Nelson, a lonely man in love with a sex doll in Lars and the Real Girl and a husband in a crumbling marriage in Blue Valentine.

But these days he considers his kids when it comes to choosing his acting jobs and no longer takes parts that could affect his mental health.

“I don’t really take roles that are going to put me in some kind of dark place,” Ryan said.

“The decisions I make, I make them with Eva, and we make them with our family in mind first,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

Ryan and his wife, actress Eva Mendes, have two daughters, Esmeralda Amada (9) and Amada Lee (8).

Ryan adopted this approach starting with his 2016 Oscar-winning musical movie La La Land, when it occurred to him that his young daughters might enjoy the musical aspect of the film.

“It was just sort of like, ‘Oh, this will be fun for them, too, because even though they’re not coming to set, we’re practicing piano every day or we’re dancing or we’re singing,’” he said.

Not unexpectedly, his daughters were thrilled at his involvement in the Barbie movie, even if they weren’t fans of Ken.

“They were already making little movies about their Barbies on the iPad when [I was cast], so the fact that I was going off to work to make one, too, we just felt like we were aligned.”

His daughters, Ryan shared, also get a say in what kind of stunts their dad can do in his movies.

“My kids didn’t want me to be set on fire,” he told People magazine in an interview about his latest movie, action comedy The Fall Guy, where he plays a stuntman recruited to find a missing actor.

“They were like, ‘No. No fire.’ So I didn’t do it.”

And, he says, his daughters are not even the slightest bit star-struck by him – he’s just their dad.