Ryan Gosling has confirmed he split up with long-term girlfriend Rachel McAdams earlier this year - and his fans are more upset about it than he is.

Ryan and Rachel met on the set of The Notebook in 2004 and dated for three years before secretly splitting in May this year.

Both parties have kept quiet about the split and even now, Ryan refuses to go into details. He told GQ magazine recently: “The only thing I remember [about the break-up] is we both went down swingin’ and we called it a draw.”

But he added fans of the couple, and particularly their film, have made their feelings very clear on the subject: “Women are mad at me. A girl came up to me on the street and she almost smacked me. Like, ‘How could you? How could you let a girl like that go?’”

“I feel like I want to give people hugs, they seem so sad. Rachel and I should be the ones getting hugs! Instead, we’re consoling everybody else.”

“God bless The Notebook. It introduced me to one of the great loves of my life. But people do Rachel and me a disservice by assuming we were anything like the people in that movie. Rachel and my love story is a hell of a lot more romantic than that.”