EVA’S MARRIAGE SECRET
THE LOVED-UP AND LOW-KEY A-LISTERS ARE IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL
The pandemic has been a crazy time for a lot of people – and Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling are no exception. “Sometimes it feels like we are running some kind of bed and breakfast with very drunk and aggressive guests,” the actress recently shared with the Sydney Morning Herald of their daughters, Esmeralda, 6, and Amada, 4. “We really do feel like we’re working in a hotel, and the guests are angry and bossy and demand food brought to them. And by the time they go to sleep, we’re left to just clean up and talk about how they’ve treated us that day!”
Her comment provided an intimate look inside the life of the notoriously private couple. The pair were friends before Gosling recommended to director Derek
Cianfrance that he cast Mendes opposite him in the 2012 drama The Place Beyond the Pines. They bonded on set, and in September 2011 they were spotted on a PDA-filled date at Disneyland.
“They were very playful. Eva was skipping around like a little girl,” a source told Us Weekly as their romance was discovered. Another source added, “There’s always been this strong chemistry between them … this was just a matter of time.”
In the nine years since, Mendes, 46, and Gosling, 39, have become experts at dodging paparazzi, especially since welcoming their daughters. Before becoming pregnant for the first time at 40, Mendes told Women’s Health magazine in 2019 that motherhood was “the furthest thing from my mind”. What changed? “Ryan Gosling happened,” she said, adding, “I mean, falling in love with him. Then it made sense for me to have … not kids, but his kids. It was very specific to him.”
Gosling was similarly single-minded in an interview with Hello! magazine in 2015. “I know that I’m with the person I’m supposed to be with,” he said, adding the only quality he looks for in a woman is “that she’s Eva Mendes. There’s nothing else I’m looking for”.
The low-key life they’ve built away from the spotlight features Gosling in the kitchen – “Ryan is an amazing chef AND baker. No joke,” Mendes revealed in February
– and Mendes spending time
“There’s nothing else I’m looking for” – GOSLING
painting and crafting with their girls. “They are both in love with being parents, and can’t get enough of it,” a source told WHO’s sister publication People magazine in 2018. “Like any couple they have disagreements, but the children come first, and they share a love for them which neither had experienced before.”
Sitting down with Access Daily in 2019, Mendes spoke candidly about the ups and downs of raising kids. “It’s so fun and beautiful and maddening,” she said. “It’s so hard, of course. But it’s like that feeling of … you end your day, you put them to bed and Ryan and I kind of look at each other like, ‘We did it, we did it. We came out relatively unscathed.’”
Still, the pair prioritise date nights. “It takes a lot of prep,” she continued. “You got to prep it and make sure you have it all lined up. Luckily we have a lot of family support.”
Mendes has taken a hiatus from acting, instead focusing on her fashion line, which has afforded her more time at home. “I feel like, as far as my ambition, it didn’t go away, it just shifted onto the children,” she recently told SMH. “I applaud and look up to those women who can do it all, but I’m not one of them – and, thankfully, I have a choice not to work and I realise how fortunate I am that it’s even a choice. I’ve been so happy to be able to incubate with my babies, but now they are four and six, I’m starting to feel like my ambition is coming back.”
Her last film was 2014’s Lost River, which was directed by her husband. “I just love working with him,” she told Oprah magazine in 2019. “In a career of 20+ years, to have my two most incredible creative experiences be with him, of course, I’d want a third.
I would love to either act opposite him again or be directed by him at some point.”
For now, their most extraordinary collaboration is their life at home with each other and with their daughters. “We are definitely just mum and dad to them,” Mendes told Oprah magazine. “And we’re trying to keep it that way as long as possible.” •