TORONTO (CP) - Ryan Gosling, Canada's hottest up-and-coming actor, doesn't act the part of a major movie star who's been in demand by big Hollywood studios ever since his Oscar-nominated performance in 'Half Nelson' last year.

Gosling, dressed down in a denim shirt, brown pants and a pair of beat-up Doc Martens, was shy, sly and self-deprecating at a Toronto International Film Festival news conference on Monday to promote his new film, 'Lars and the Real Girl.'

Perhaps it's the Canadian in him. The 26-year-old Gosling was born in London, Ont., and raised in Cornwall.

"We don't have to fight about it," the soft-spoken Gosling joked to the news conference's American moderator when he was challenged about his comment that the surprisingly sweet film, about a troubled young man who falls in love with a sex doll, has a Canadian sensibility that felt familiar to him.

"Canadians are just nicer - it's known."

'Lars and the Real Girl,' in fact, is set in Minnesota (although shot in southern Ontario) and tells the story of Lars Lindstrom, a painfully awkward social misfit whose mother died in childbirth, leaving him with a lifelong fear of allowing people to get too close to him.

He sends away for an anatomically correct sex doll - not a blow-up doll, Gosling pointed out frequently during the news conference - and develops a deep, although entirely chaste, attachment to Bianca. Lars takes Bianca, a pretty brunette, to dinner at his bewildered brother and sister-in-law's house, where he describes her as a missionary from Brazil.

Without seeing 'Lars and the Real Girl,' it might be easy to dismiss the film as an exercise in cinematic creepiness. But in fact the script is about inherent human goodness - the townsfolk in Lars's hamlet and his family members are soon treating Bianca as though she's a genuine and productive human being in order to help Lars work through his demons.

The love and acceptance of Bianca continued off-camera, the cast said.

"She has a real presence," Gosling said as British actress Emily Mortimer, who plays Lars's big-hearted sister-in-law, agreed.

As the assembled media chuckled at their stories of how the cast and crew treated Bianca with respect and reverence throughout the shoot, Gosling chided playfully: "Laugh all you want, but I challenge all of you to spend 20 minutes in Bianca's presence and not fall in love."

His bond with Bianca became so real, claimed the grinning Gosling, that he now owns one of the two Biancas used during the film - but he refused to say in what room in his house the doll resides. Gosling sheepishly acknowledged that his girlfriend, Canadian actress Rachel McAdams, isn't so thrilled about Bianca's presence.

Serious for a moment, Gosling acknowledged he fell in love with the script by Nancy Oliver, adding that he's on pins and needles waiting to see how the film is received. It goes into mainstream release on Oct. 21.

"I'm really proud of it and I'm more anxious to see what people think of it than any movie I've ever done - it's so special and there's nothing really that I can compare it to," he said.

Gosling has nothing to worry about if the positive buzz about the movie on the festival circuit is any indication. Canadian director Jason Reitman, for one, said 'Lars and the Real Girl' was one of the films he most wanted to see when he visited the Toronto festival to promote his own gentle and quirky movie, 'Juno.'