as a mouseketeer and moved to Orlando, Florida. He appeared on-screen infrequently because other children were considered more talented. Nonetheless, he has described the job as the greatest two years of his life. Fellow cast members included Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake. Gosling has credited the experience with instilling in them "this great sense of focus." He became particularly close friends with Timberlake and they lived together for six months during the second year of the show. Timberlake's mother became Gosling's legal guardian after his mother returned to Canada for work reasons. Gosling has said that even though he and Timberlake talk infrequently, they are still supportive of each other. Following the show's cancellation in 1995, Gosling returned to Canada, where he continued to appear in family entertainment television series, including Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1995) and Goosebumps (1996), and starred in Breaker High (1997–98) as Sean Hanlon. At age eighteen, he moved to New Zealand to film the Fox Kids adventure series Young Hercules (1998–1999) as the title character. He later said that he initially enjoyed working on the series, but began to care too much about the show, so it was no longer fun for him. He wanted to spend more time sitting with and devising a character as well as play a variety of roles, so he chose to transition into film and not accept any more television work. 2000–2003: Move to independent film Aged 19, Gosling decided to move into "serious acting". He was dropped by his agent and initially found it difficult to secure work because of the "stigma" attached to children's television. After a supporting role in the football drama Remember the Titans, he secured a lead role as a young Jewish neo-Nazi in 2001's The Believer. Director Henry Bean said he cast Gosling because his Mormon upbringing helped him understand the isolation of Judaism. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times praised an "electrifying and terrifyingly convincing" performance while Todd McCarthy of Variety felt his "dynamite performance" could "scarcely have been better". The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and Gosling has described it as "the film that kind of gift-wrapped for me the career that I have now." Because of the controversial nature of the film, it was difficult to secure financial backing for a full theatrical release, and the film was instead