This is not news —it was just news to me.

Ryan Gosling has a tattoo of The Giving Tree on his left arm.

After some intense googling, all I could find by way of explanation is an interview in Metro.co,uk where he says that his mother used to read the book to him and his sister when they were kids and this 2010 interview with Vulture, where we get the (false) impression that it’s a faux tattoo, for his role in Blue Valentine:

And your character has a tattoo of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree on his arm? That book is so fucked up; that story’s the worst. I mean, at the end the tree is a stump and the old guy just sitting on him; he’s just used him to death, and you’re supposed to want to be the tree? Fuck you. You be the tree. I don’t want to be the tree.

He says the story is “the worst.” So what gives????

At any rate, this little segment Jimmy Kimmel did on the book a couple years ago is priceless: