Ryan Gosling says he didn't want to do stunts for 'The Fall Guy,' but the director had him dragged along Sydney Harbour Bridge on a shovel anyway

• Ryan Gosling was dragged across Sydney Harbour Bridge on a shovel in his new movie "The Fall Guy."
• Gosling told "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" that he was happy to skip the stunts.

Ryan Gosling said he was forced to do some of the wild stunts in his latest movie, "The Fall Guy," including surfing on a shovel across a bridge in Sydney.

In the upcoming movie, Gosling stars as a stuntman who uses his skills in the real world when the star of a mega-budget studio movie disappears.

While promoting the movie on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" on Sunday, Gosling said he couldn't avoid doing stunts in this movie because the film is a homage to stunt performers, and the director David Leitch is a former stuntman.

"I was prepared to be the first actor to say I have done none of my own stunts. I would be happy to say that," he said.

"They weren't going to let that happen," he said, referring to Leitch and the stunt performers who worked on the movie.

Gosling was dropped from a building and dragged across a bridge on a shovel

Gosling said he was dropped from a 12-story building while filming one of the stunt scenes. In another scene, Gosling was dragged along the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney while riding a shovel.

"It was very early. I wasn't fully caffeinated. I grabbed a shovel and suddenly it happened," Gosling said of filming the scene. "We did it a few times. I went back to my trailer and slept and I thought, 'That was a weird dream.'"

The directors and producers of "The Fall Guy" specifically wanted to use real stunts for the movie rather than relying on CGI and green screens. "The Fall Guy" producer Kelly McCormick told Empire in November that they hired 120 stunt crew members in order to pull this off.

"We were doing these huge stunts, like a huge 150-foot fall, which hadn't happened in about 10 years," she said. "We did a giant cannon roll [flipping a car multiple times] on a beach — that hadn't been done since, I think, 'Casino Royale.'"

The action movie also has a star-studded cast, including Emily Blunt, Stephanie Hsu, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Winston Duke, and Hannah Waddingham.

"The Fall Guy" premieres at the South by Southwest Festival this week but will receive a wider release on May 3.