Eva Mendes Has Been Open About Her Decision to Step Away From Acting, But Now People Are Being Weird About Her and Ryan Gosling
Project Hail Mary has put Ryan Gosling back in the public consciousness… and in the process, it’s led to some weird insinuations about his and Eva Mendes’ decades-long relationship.
This week, a screenshot of an Instagram comment from Mendes made the rounds on social media, in which she referred to Gosling as “the most incredible partner and father,” adding “I love letting everyone know that. He’s beyond the beyond!” The comment was quickly met with some negativity on Twitter, with user @knowlesonfilm responding: “ask yourselves why his partner (not even wife) of many years doesn’t have a career anymore.”
This comment brought a lot of attention to Mendes’ decision to step away from acting in 2014, following the birth of her and Gosling’s first daughter. It also, in the process, brought attention to the revisionist history that has since surrounded Mendes’ decision, and the idea that she made the choice because Gosling had pressured her into being a stay-at-home wife.
Mendes, whose most recent live-action credit is Gosling’s directorial debut Lost River, has repeatedly made it clear that her acting hiatus was her own decision. While it coincided with the birth of her and Gosling’s two daughters, her decision to step away was also due to the nature of the industry itself, with her flat-out explaining in an interview with Variety in 2022 “I don’t really miss it.”
Why Did Eva Mendes Retire From Acting?
“I got tired fighting for the good roles,” Mendes explained. “There just was a point where I thought, ‘I’m going to create my own opportunities and become a producer on things and create my own material,’ but it just didn’t feel worth it to me.”
“There are more opportunities for Latina actresses now, but when I bowed out 10 years ago I wasn’t being offered things that weren’t specifically Latina,” she added at the time. “It is exciting that things are different now, so who knows what I will do in the future. But right now, I’m keeping it in the home with my kids.”
A few years later, in 2024, she told The Today Show that the decision was “like a no-brainer,” and argued that the stars aligned for her to be able to be close to her kids while still working on other business ventures.
“I’m so lucky,” Mendes continued. “And I was like, if I can have this time with my children – and I still work, I just didn’t act, because acting takes you on locations, it takes you away. It was almost just like a non-verbal agreement that it was like, okay, he’s going to work and I’m going to work. I’m just going to work here.”
Even then, Mendes has not completely retired from the entertainment sphere, as it is worth mentioning that she has since voiced a yoga instructor in a 2021 episode of Bluey. And Gosling, for that matter, also stepped away from the industry from 2018 through 2021, telling GQ in 2022 that he “wanted to spend as much time as I could with” Mendes and their two children.
With the recent smash success of Project Hail Mary and Gosling’s performance in it, people were inevitably going to try to take him down a peg. But trying to insinuate something sinister under the surface — that Gosling sabotaged his wife’s career to turn her into a stay-at-home wife — is just deflecting and being invasive.
(featured image: Focus Features)
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