Eva Mendes is a naturally confident person, but that self-assuredness skyrockets with every glance from partner Ryan Gosling.
“I feel really f—ing sexy at times,” Mendes, 50, told The Sunday Times in a profile published on Sunday, October 20. “The way my man looks at me is just … at times I’m like, ‘Oh, my God.’”
She added, “That might not sit well with people, but so much of how I feel is a reflection of what he’s giving me. There’s so many things that can make me feel sexy and I’d say that I feel more sexy than not. I guess because I’ve never considered myself beautiful, but I’ve always felt very sexy.”
Mendes and Gosling, 43, have been together since 2012 after meeting on the set of The Place Beyond the Pines. Their joint projects, naturally, have been her all-time favorites.
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“I was never in love with acting. I don’t mean this in a self-deprecating way, but I wasn’t a great actress. I had my moments when I worked with really great people,” Mendes admitted to the outlet. “He gets something out of me that’s never been accessible before.”
Mendes walked away from acting in 2014 when she gave birth to the couple’s first child. (They share daughters Esmeralda, now 9, and Amada, now 7.)
While Mendes would only consider an acting return if Gosling was her leading man, she also supports his successful career. In fact, Mendes was Gosling’s unofficial acting coach when he played Ken in 2023’s Barbie.
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“I would just simplify everything. I’m like, ‘Just make Barbie notice you, that’s what Ken is all about.’ So then there was this desperation. He really loved that,” Mendes recalled. “I’d remind him, as he’s literally walking out the door, ‘Make Barbie notice you, make Barbie fall in love with you.’”
Mendes, Esmeralda and Amada were Gosling’s No. 1 fans as he took on the beloved role that even scored him an Oscar nomination and a performance at the ceremony.
Mendes and Gosling keep their daughters private and off social media, practicing “conscious parenting.”
“I explain to them what I didn’t have, what Ryan didn’t have when he was little, how hard we had to fight, the dark days of being paycheck to paycheck, and this and that, but they’ll never really know unless they experience that,” Mendes stated. “The next best thing [to gain perspective], according to Dr. [Daniel] Amen [the author of Raising Mentally Strong Kids], is to really have them work on their self-esteem for themselves by doing things like working in the house.”
