Anthony Mackie says he made Ryan Gosling famous by costarring in ‘Half Nelson’

Anthony Mackie has appeared in two of the highest grossing movies of all time, worked with some of the 21st century’s most prominent filmmakers, and acted in a Best Picture winner — but there’s one accomplishment that he wants more credit for.

The Elevation star takes responsibility for the success of one of Hollywood’s most beloved leading men, he reveals in a new video interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I made this guy famous,” Mackie says as he points to a photo of Ryan Gosling on the poster for 2013’s Gangster Squad. “We did his first movie together. Nobody cares? That was a good memory.”

The film Mackie is referring to is 2006’s Half Nelson, a drama about a middle school teacher with a drug problem that actually came after Gosling had already acted in hit films like The Notebook and Remember the Titans. Mackie is correct in asserting Half Nelson‘s importance to Gosling’s success, however, as it earned him his first Oscar nomination and was the first performance for which he received widespread critical acclaim.

Later in the video, Mackie comes across the poster for Half Nelson. “I made a lot of dudes famous,” he says. The actor also details a bizarre story from shooting the film near docks in Brooklyn. “A cat comes over — nobody knew where this cat was from, nobody checked this cat, nobody vasectosized this cat,” he recalls. “Where is this cat from? Ryan picks up the cat, nuzzles it, and starts rubbing the cat.”

Mackie was disgusted by his costar’s behavior. “And I’m like, ‘Yo, you’re gonna catch something!'” he remembers. “That cat was nasty. It was like mangy. It looked like a creature in the ‘Thriller’ video with Michael Jackson. That’s how it was walking. He picked that s— up, man! He picked that s— up! That boy is wild. True story, ask him.”

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Elsewhere in the video, Mackie reflects on bulking up to work with Dwayne Johnson on Michael Bay‘s 2013 drama Pain & Gain. “I had worked out to get up to like 205 pounds,” he says. “I was eating like six times a day, I was going to the bathroom three times a day. It was a massive undertaking.”

All of Mackie’s effort was for naught, however. “So the Rock shows up, and he was doing WrestleMania while we were shooting Pain & Gain,” he recalls. “When he walked in, I literally looked like a 12-year-old child. So they had to put me in sweatshirts and all this stuff to make me look bigger because he was so huge. And then I got to go to WrestleMania and sit ringside and watch the Rock wrestle.”

Mackie also tells the tale of his travels after he completed shooting The Hurt Locker in 2007. “I met this dude named Fadi who did special effects on The Hurt Locker, and he told me when the movie wrapped, he was going by camel to Mecca,” the actor says. “I was like, ‘That sounds crazy. I want in.’ He was like, ‘Alright, cool.'”

He continues, “So final day of shooting, he brought like three camels. One camel had all of our stuff on it, he had his camel, there was like two of his cousins, and there was an extra camel. [I] get on the camel, I ride from Amman, Jordan to Saudi Arabia. And in my passport, I got a picture of a camel, and it says ‘Crossed by camel.'”

Watch the full video interview with Mackie above.