A decade after her last big-screen appearance, Eva Mendes says she has no regrets about leaving Hollywood behind.
Speaking to the U.K.’s Sunday Times in an interview published this weekend, Mendes shared that she “was never in love with acting,” despite a career that included roles in “Training Day” and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” among other acclaimed films.
“I don’t mean this in a self-deprecating way, but I wasn’t a great actress,” she told the outlet. “I had my moments when I worked with really great people.”
Mendes, who is Cuban American, said she found herself on the receiving end of criticism from filmmakers because of her heritage, only to eventually find herself typecast.
“There were some pretty shitty roles,” she said. “That’s all they would say at the beginning — ‘she’s too ethnic for this, too ethnic for that.’ 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.”
Sonia Recchia via Getty Images
Still, Mendes acknowledged a few high points. She appeared opposite her future husband, Ryan Gosling, in the 2012 crime drama “The Place Beyond the Pines.” Two years later, she was seen in Gosling’s directorial feature debut, “Lost River.”
In the interview, Mendes noted she’s most proud of her performances in those films and would consider a return to acting if it was a project alongside Gosling, with whom she shares two children.
“He gets something out of me that’s never been accessible before,” she said of the “Drive” actor.
Though Mendes hasn’t acted since “Lost River,” she’s been keeping busy in the realms of fashion and beauty. In 2015, she launched the makeup brand Circa Beauty and currently serves as the company’s creative director.
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Still, she hasn’t lost her sense of what makes an acting performance genuine and believable. In her Sunday Times chat, she recalled offering tips to Gosling, most notably when it came to his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Ken in the 2023 blockbuster “Barbie.”
“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,” she said. “I’d remind him, as he’s literally walking out the door, ‘Make Barbie notice you, make Barbie fall in love with you.’”