Romance Rewind: The Ryan Gosling And Eva Mendes Love Story
Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling are fiercely private people: you won’t see them plaster their kids all over social media, that’s for sure. Gosling doesn’t even have social media. In a world where celebrity couples are expected to be promoting themselves 24/7, Mendes and Gosling chose privacy above all. But here’s everything we do know about them and their family.
Prior relationships
Let’s start by taking a look at their prior relationships. While Mendes had never previously married, she had been in a long-term relationship before: she was the partner of music producer George Augusto from 2002 to 2011. That relationship, too, was kept very private.
Meanwhile, Gosling dated many famous women during the early years of his career. From 2002 to 2003 he was in a relationship with Sandra Bullock, and then he had an on-again off-again relationship with The Notebook co-star Rachel McAdams from 2005 until 2008.
First dates
Then Gosling and Mendes began working on a movie together, The Place Beyond the Pines, where they played lovers. And suddenly reports started coming out that their on-screen romance had turned into an off-screen one.
Tongues first started wagging in earnest soon after the celebrity gossip magazine Us Weekly got hold of some PDA-packed photographs of the pair of them enjoying each other’s company on a date at Disneyland, California.
PDA
A fan spotted the enamored pair at Disneyland and reported back to Us Weekly. "They were very playful," they told the magazine. “Eva was skipping around like a little girl.”
They added, “ She would lean into him, and she held his arm the entire time.” A month later, in October 2011, the pair of them were seen having a major makeout session in the back of Gosling’s car.
Paris
The romantic dates just kept coming. In November 2011 news came to us via Us Weekly that Gosling had surprised Mendes on the set of her new movie, Holly Motors, and whisked her off to Paris.
“They were talking all the time so she had no hints that he was coming,” an insider told the magazine. “She was really homesick and missed him, even though she practically just left to shoot!”
Drunk History Christmas
In January 2012 the pair worked together once more, both appearing in a Funny or Die sketch called “Drunk History Christmas.” And it leaned into the fact that they were romantically involved.
The sketch showed the two of them waking up in bed together before acting out scenes from the famous 1823 poem Twas the Night Before Christmas. Jim Carrey was also there, playing Santa Claus.
Distant
Things seemed just about perfect for a good few months. But then in May 2012 new rumors surfaced that Gosling and Mendes had hit a slight bump in their relationship.
According to Us Weekly, the actor had grown “distant” towards his girlfriend. “He says he wants to slow down and not live with her yet,” another insider, an apparent friend of Mendes, told the magazine. “But he doesn’t want to lose her.”
Dream co-star
Luckily, though, everything was resolved and Gosling didn’t lose Mendes: quite the opposite, in fact. Mendes finally began talking about the relationship that month, and she had nothing but good things to say.
She spoke to Marie Claire magazine while promoting The Place Beyond the Pines and said, “He's your dream co-star. I have never felt so creatively satisfied on a film. He's amazing.”
No details
Yet then when Marie Claire pushed Mendes for more details, as you might have expected, she refused to give them. “I'm not gonna budge. I feel uncomfortable talking about it. It's too personal,” she said.
She also refused to be drawn on her plans for the future. “I am not that girl. I don't like talking about things that I want in the future because I feel by verbalizing such things, they won’t come true.”
Meeting the family
Then in June 2012 Gosling took the step of introducing Mendes to his beloved mother Donna — assuming he hadn’t done it already out of view of any cameras, of course.
He brought Mendes to his mother’s graduation ceremony from Brock University in Ontario, and they were caught on camera together. Clearly things were starting to get extremely serious in the relationship.
Same page
This, too, made it to the pages of Us Weekly. “Donna wants Ryan to settle down and Eva is all about getting him on that train too, so they're both on the same page,” an anonymous source said.
“Eva says that’s what sealed the deal with Ryan,” claimed the insider, who then predicted, “They’re going to make it.” Needless to say, this delighted fans of the celebrity couple.
Premiere time
A few months later The Place Beyond the Pines had its premiere in Toronto and Mendes and Gosling walked the red carpet together. But there were no PDA while the cameras were on them.
The couple had clearly decided to be on best behavior: they remained strictly professional. The premiere remains one of the very few times the pair have “officially” been out together and allowed themselves to be photographed.
Mendes gives another interview
In March 2013 Mendes spoke out some more about the relationship, but she didn’t reveal a huge amount. She did however let slip that she and Gosling had been friends before they started dating.
In fact, it turned out they had even been buddies before work on The Place Beyond the Pines had begun. It had been Gosling who’d recommended Mendes for her role in the movie in the first place.
Mendes gets flustered
That was all Mendes was willing to reveal at the time, though. In September she did an interview with magazine The Edit where they asked her about her relationship with Gosling, and she wasn’t willing to talk.
"I'm sorry. I'm shutting down," she told the interviewer. "I'm such a weirdo. I literally lose my ability to speak — and you were doing so well.” Oops. She was a closed book.
Pregnancy rumors
In February 2014 Mendes went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show amidst rumors she was pregnant. And Ellen, always one to pry, asked if the actress really was. Mendes called the speculation “ridiculous.”
It all started because I didn't want to go through the scanners at the airport,” she said. “You know those X-ray scanners, which are really creepy? They basically see you naked, right? And not only that, but there's a radiation aspect to it, so I always opt out."
Pregnancy confirmed!
But then, in July, it turned out that Mendes was pregnant after all! She and Gosling had taken the next step in their relationship and they were about to become parents.
But no outlet that reported the happy news had a statement from Mendes or Gosling. The pair of them were keeping absolutely silent about it and seemingly all the more determined to maintain their privacy.
Esmeralda
The baby came along in September 2014 and it was a girl. Somehow TMZ got hold of the birth certificate and reported to the world that the baby’s name was Esmeralda.
You can see why the couple cling on to their personal lives so fiercely. No-one wants to have to deal with their newborn baby’s birth certificate being spread across the internet when they’re entering the stressful phase of first-time parenthood.
A big interview
Eventually Mendes gave an interview about her baby daughter, but it was strictly on her own terms. She spoke to her friend Cassandra Huysentruyt Grey for her blog The Violet Files.
During the interview she went into detail about her daughter’s full name, Esmeralda Amada, and what it was like being a new mom. It was a rare glimpse into her life with Gosling and their family.
Beautiful name
Asked why she had picked the name Esmeralda, Mendes revealed a literary inspiration. She said, "Ryan and I both love the Esmeralda character from the Victor Hugo novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
She went on, “And just think it's a beautiful name.” And as for the origin of Esmeralda’s rather unusual middle name, "Amada was my grandmother's name. It means 'beloved' in Spanish.”
Unfair
Then Mendes spoke about the privacy issue. “Whether we like it or not, privacy is going to be very difficult for Esmeralda," she said. "I think it's unfair but that's our reality.”
She went on, “So Ryan and I decided early on to give her as much privacy as we could. And my pregnancy was the first opportunity to give her that.”
“Intrusive and stressful”
Mendes said that pregnancy was “such an intimate time for the mother, too” and she disliked having to share that intimacy with the world. You might reasonably feel that’s a perfectly understandable viewpoint to take.
“I know that it seems all very innocuous when you're flipping through a tabloid at the doctor's office or see a photo of a pregnant lady online, but I find the media's 'bump watch' obsession to be both intrusive and stressful,” she said. “So I made a decision to eject myself from it completely.”
Lost River
Believe it or not, despite being parents to a baby, Mendes and Gosling were still able to take time to make another movie together in 2015. They didn’t actually appear on screen together in this one, though.
That’s because Mendes starred, while Gosling directed! The movie was called Lost River and it was the first time Gosling had ever helmed a feature film. Luckily, his wife was in a position to provide maximum support!
The only quality
As Christmas approached that year, Gosling revealed a few tiny glimpses into where his life was now that the baby was born. “This will be our first Christmas where [Esmeralda is] sort of taking it all in, so that’s exciting,” he told Hello! magazine.
And as for Mendes, he sweetly said, “I know that I’m with the person I’m supposed to be with.” The only quality he looked for in a woman, he said, was "that she’s Eva Mendes. There’s nothing else I’m looking for.”
Amada
In April 2016 Mendes and Gosling had another child… and once again TMZ broke the news rather than waiting for the couple to confirm the birth themselves. Mendes did do an interview about her second baby, Amada, in August, though.
"My grandmother's name is Amada, and Esmeralda Amada is the name of our oldest. We had a few names picked out for our new baby, and when she was born, we didn't feel like those names were her," Mendes told Latina magazine."We came up with a few more, even that morning, and tried them out. We were like, 'What about Viviana?' But we just kept going back to Amada."
Loved
As previously noted, “Amada” means “loved” or “beloved” in Spanish, so it was a perfect name for both Mendes-Gosling daughters to share. "In true Latin fashion, we reuse names all the time," Mendes said. "I actually told [Ryan], 'This is common in Latin culture, so it wouldn't be crazy.'"
She also said, "My older little girl is not yet two years old. My little one is still an infant, and right now it's really about surviving those nights and trying to enjoy this time as much as possible with them, and start the bond between Esmeralda and Amada. It's a really, really special time. I'm loving it."
A death in the family
Lots was going on in Mendes’ life at that time. She was dealing with the death of her brother Carlos while raising two children and maintaining her career as a highly sought-after actress.
"We had a funeral service for [Carlos], and that same week, I had the baby,” Mendes told Latina. “It was really, really intense and obviously beyond heartbreaking, but also kind of beautiful.”
Gosling gets a Golden Globe
But Gosling was there at her side through all of it. And when he picked up a Golden Globe Award for La La Land at the 2017 ceremony, he made sure to talk about his love and respect for Mendes.
“While I was singing and dancing and playing piano and having one of the best experiences I've ever had on a film, my lady was raising our daughter, pregnant with our second, and trying to help her brother fight his battle with cancer," he said.
Sweetheart
He went on, "If she hadn't have taken all that on so that I could have this experience, it would surely be someone else up here other than me today. So, sweetheart, thank you.”
And then he shouted out to his daughters, saying, “To my daughters Amada and Esmeralda, I love you. And if I may, I would like to dedicate this to the memory of [Mendes’] brother, Juan Carlos Mendez."
Party date
The rest of 2017 was rather quiet for Gosling and Mendes, or as quiet as you can expect the lives of famous actors to ever be. Perfectly understandable, given that they had two young children to look after!.
All the same, that year did mark a rare joint appearance for the couple. They were photographed together going to a party after Gosling hosted the 43rd season premiere of Saturday Night Live.
Normal kid experience”
It was around this time that Mendes, now taking a break from acting, seemed to get a little more open about her personal life. She spoke about it during quite an extensive interview with Oprah magazine in May 2019.
She explained that she was still fiercely maintaining the privacy of her and Gosling’s kids. “We just want to make sure our kids are protected and have somewhat of a normal kid experience. So, keeping them out of the public as much as possible, just feels right and normal to us,” she said.
Not aware
Asked if the girls were aware that their parents were celebrities, Mendes said, “They are not aware. We are definitely just mom and dad to them, and we’re trying to keep it that way as long as possible.”
The kids had shown no interest in their parents’ jobs, she said. “It’s not like we have our own movies playing or anything like that! We are just mom and dad, so we are having fun just being that to them.”
Collaborations
Mendes also gave her views on her movie collaborations with her husband. “The two times we’ve collaborated, him and I, have been the two best experiences in my career,” she said.
“There’s such special work in The Place Beyond the Pines. We had known each other for a while already, so to work together was really exciting.” And she was more than happy at the idea of doing a third film with him.
Consent
In April 2020 the world started going into COVID-19 lockdown. So Mendes began, like everyone else, to spend a lot of time on social media. At one point someone asked her why she didn’t post pictures of her family on there.
Mendes answered, "I have always had a clear boundary when it comes to my man and my kids. I'll talk about them of course, with limits, but I won't post pictures of our daily life. And since my children are still so little and don't understand what posting their image really means, I don't have their consent.”
Lockdown
Once the whole world was in lockdown, Mendes dealt with the situation via deadpan humor. At one point, she shared a pic of herself running on the beach and captioned it, "Went for a run on the beach this morning. No I didn't. This picture was taken at least 15 years ago.”
“Haven't seen a beach this year. Haven't been on a run this year." When one user commented "You need to tell Ryan to get you out more,” Mendes answered, "No thank you, I'm good. Rather be home with my man than anywhere else in the world.”
Changing minds
But even in lockdown there were interviews to be done. During a conversation on the Fitzy & Wippa radio show, Mendes mused on how she “never wanted babies” before falling in love with Gosling.
"It kind of worked out to where I was 40 and having my first baby. I think I was 42 for the second one, so it worked out in that way that I had a career and then I change my focus to my family," she said.
Quarantine memories
Once the pandemic lockdown was finally over, Gosling was happy to reveal some — but not too many — details about what he and his family had done during that difficult time.
"Our kids are young, so it was a tough time for them to be separated from other kids and not being able to see family and whatnot,” he told GQ in 2021. "So, we did our best to entertain them. I think Eva and I did more acting in quarantine than we have in our whole careers."
Family
In May 2023 just as Gosling was gearing up for the release of the highly anticipated Barbie, he did an interview with GQ where he spoke about his family. "I wasn't thinking about kids before I met her, but after I met Eva, I realized that I just didn't want to have kids without her," he said.
"And there were moments on The Place Beyond the Pines where we were pretending to be a family, and I didn't really want it to be pretend anymore. I realized that this would be a life I would be really lucky to have."
Beyond proud
Once Gosling picked up an Oscar nomination for Barbie, Mendes took to social media to praise her partner and laugh at the naysayers who said he wasn’t right to play Ken. "So proud of my man," she wrote. "So much hate when he took on this role. So many people trying to shame him for doing it.”
“Despite all the #Notmyken ridicule and articles written about him, he created this completely original, hilarious, heartbreaking, now iconic character and took it all the way to Oscars. So beyond proud to be this Ken's Barbie.”
He’s just Ken
When Gosling performed his smash-hit song from Barbie, “I’m Just Ken,” at the Oscars it was a huge success. And though Mendes did not arrive at the Oscars with him, she posted her support on social media.
"You took Ken all the way to the Oscar's, RG," she captioned one photo. "Now come home, we need to put the kids to bed." It was just another example of the grounded approach that has endeared this celebrity couple to so many fans.
The marriage question
Mendes and Gosling are surely one of the most adorable power couples in Hollywood. So some have wondered… Are they going to get married? Well, actually they might have already tied the knot in secret!
Back in 2022 Mendes casually referred to Gosling as her “husband” during a press event. And around that time she also got a tattoo of Gosling’s name on her wrist. When asked about marriage, she has always been coy. So are they married? Aren’t they? Well, with a love as strong as theirs, perhaps it doesn’t matter.