Eva Mendes Says She and Ryan Gosling Had a ‘Nonverbal Agreement’ That She Would Pause Acting

You may have noticed that we haven’t seen Eva Mendes act in anything in, well, quite some time. And she’s finally explained why. In an interview with Today, Mendes said she and husband Ryan Gosling, with whom she has two daughters, had a sort of “nonverbal agreement” that she would stop acting in order to spend more time with their kids.

“It was like a no-brainer,” the actor said. “I’m so lucky if I can have this time with my children.” Because with acting, Mendes explained, you have to travel to be on location all the time, which necessarily takes you away from your kids. “I still worked; I just didn’t act.”

“It was almost just like a nonverbal agreement,” she said. “It was like, ‘Okay, he’s going to work and I’m going to work—I’m just going to work here.’” In fact, the last movie Eva Mendes acted in was Lost River in 2014, which was, perhaps not coincidentally, written and directed by Gosling.

Mendes and Gosling first met on the set of The Place Beyond the Pines in 2011, and welcomed their daughters Esmeralda and Amada in 2014 and 2016, respectively. “On a personal level, I think about time more than I used to. I have two kids and they’re growing up fast,” Gosling told GQ in 2021. “For my first Father’s Day, Eva gave me a watch. The brand doesn’t matter. The symbol was what mattered. It meant you’re on the clock now.”