Eva Mendes Has One Condition To Return To Acting

Eva Mendes has been taking a lengthy break from acting, in case you haven’t noticed. The star of movies like “Training Day,” “Hitch,” and “The Other Guys” has been on hiatus since her last project, “Lost River,” released in 2014. So what would it take to get her back in front of the camera? It’s pretty simple: let her work with her real-life partner Ryan Gosling again.

Mendes spoke to Laura Pullman at The Telegraph (she and Gosling are currently stationed in London while he films “Project Hail Mary”) and revealed that she would definitely do another project with Gosling, even though she admitted that acting was never a great love for her. “I was never in love with acting,” Mendes revealed. “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.” Of Gosling, Mendes said, “He gets something out of me that’s never been accessible before.” (The two worked together on the drama “The Place Beyond the Pines” in 2012.)

Furthermore, Mendes said that she was offered too many stereotypically Latinx roles during her time in Hollywood, and she thinks that would just happen again. “That’s all they would say at the beginning — ‘she’s too ethnic for this, too ethnic for that,'” Mendes said. “It was so crazy. That was the constant note. Then, at some point, it switched to ‘oh, ethnic is cool now’ or ‘being Latina is cool.’ It gave me energy because it would make me so mad and then I’d get that fuel that I needed.” What did she did confirm, though, is that she’d get back into the game for Gosling: “That’s the one thing I would love to do.”

Eva Mendes did reveal that she still thinks like an actor even after a decade away from the craft — in fact, she told Laura Pullman that she gives Ryan Gosling some acting tips while he works on his own projects. Apparently, she did just that while he filmed “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s pointed, candy-coated critique of the patriarchy that ended up earning Gosling, the film’s main Ken, an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.

“I would just simplify everything. I’m like, ‘Just make Barbie notice you, that’s what Ken is all about,'” Mendes recalled. “So then there was this desperation. He really loved that. I’d remind him, as he’s literally walking out the door, ‘Make Barbie notice you, make Barbie fall in love with you.'” 

Whatever Mendes did, it worked; Gosling scored multiple major nominations for playing Ken, and anyone who’s seen the movie knows he’s spectacular in it. (If you don’t believe me, go rewatch just the scene where he yells “Sublime!” off-screen and circle back.) It would be fantastic to see Mendes on screen again, but it’s oddly comforting to know she’s working behind the scenes to help Gosling be as phenomenal as possible during his own performances.