Eva Mendes Gives Rare Insight Into Marriage to Ryan Gosling

Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling are fiercely private about their family life, and take great steps to keep their relationship out of the public eye.

Which is why fans have jumped on the rare insight the actress has given into their relationship in a new interview with Women's Health, where she opens up about having children and falling in love.

In the May issue, Eva admits she didn't ever picture herself as a mother ("it was the furthest thing from my mind"), but that when she met her now-husband Ryan Gosling on the set of The Place Beyond The Pines in 2013, everything changed.

When the interviewer asked what happened to change her view, Eva giggled "Ryan Gosling happened. I mean, falling in love with him. Then it made sense for me to have…not kids, but his kids. It was very specific to him.”

The actress gave birth to their first daughter, Esmeralda, in 2014, and their second little girl, Amada, in April 2016, and went on to discuss the challenges of raising children and being a mum.

"We have an amazing support group: Ryan's mum, my mum, Ryan's and my sisters. It's a village that helped us," she said. "My heart goes out to women who do this alone. I basically come from a single-parent household; although I love my dad, my mum mostly raised four of us on her own."

Eva then touched on how after 20 years in the acting industry, having children changed where she wanted to put her energy. "I felt a lack of ambition, if I can be honest," she says. "I feel more ambitious in the home right now than I do in the workplace."

Read more in the May 2019 issue of Women’s Health.