Will she or won’t she return to acting? It’s the question Eva Mendes has been fielding for ten years since last appearing in a motion picture.
Consciously deciding to curb her appearances on the big screen in an effort to prioritize motherhood, Mendes has been raising her two daughters, Esmerelda, 10, and Amada, 8, whom she shares with longtime love Ryan Gosling.
So, while Gosling has continued to churn out blockbuster after blockbuster (“The Big Short,” “La La Land,” “Barbie,”) Mendes has channeled her creativity into other endeavors, including fashion, makeup and, most recently, a children’s book.
Mendes appeared on Good Morning America on Tuesday, to promote her book, “Desi, Mami, and The Never-Ending Worries,” and opened up about if she’ll ever return to the big screen.
“I don’t know. If there’s interesting roles…I kind of felt like I did it, you know? I was like, ‘I just worked with Ryan Gosling. He’s like, the best,'” she said, referencing her 2012 flick, “The Place Beyond the Pines.”
“It was such a high [in] my career to work with him and what we created together, that I was like, ‘This is a good time to like ’Seinfeld’ it, and just walk out.’ So, who knows?”
In recent years, Mendes has shared that her mindset has changed since having children.
“Acting is something that I will always love. It’s just like now that I have children, I’m kind of extreme,” Mendes told Entertainment Tonight in 2020. “There’s just so many things I won’t do. Like, I won’t do most of the movies I’ve done in the past. A lot of things are off that list. I don’t want to do anything too violent. Of course, I don’t want to do anything too sexual or sexual at all.”
Mendes did make a small appearance in the kid’s show, “Bluey,” in 2021, which she said “killed” in her household.
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When talking about her book on “Good Morning American,” she noted that writing it was actually beneficial to her parenting.
“Desi has these never-ending worries — I have them as well,” Mendes admitted of the book’s main character. “And she tries to work with her brain to…make sure it’s not being a bully to her, by sending all these negative thoughts her way, and that it’s being like a BFF to her.”
The “Hitch” actress explained that after defining the brain as a bully in her book, it ultimately quieted her own children’s anxiety.
“Once I named it a bully, that your brain could be a bully to you, sending you all these crazy thoughts and down a spiral, it helped me…help them deal with their anxiety,” she said of her daughters. “And by naming it and going like, ‘Hey, that’s not you. Don’t believe everything you think. That’s not you, that’s just your brain on overdrive.'”
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Mendes revealed that her kids were fans of her latest venture. “They love it. I think they love it. They’re very harsh critics though,” she shared, before telling a story she insisted was real, and not only for television.
“My little girl, who just turned 10, was having a hard time, and I swear to you, I walk into her room, she’s reading the book…That really got to me,” she said.
