Ryan Gosling can admit that he never quite envisioned himself as a father, or rather, he couldn't imagine himself as such until Eva Mendes, who he has been with since 2012, painted a picture of what their life could be that he didn't want to let go of.
Eva and Ryan met while they were filming The Place Beyond the Pines in 2011, and though kids weren't previously on his mind, as soon as he had to essentially play house with the fellow actress on set, he didn't want to play anymore, he wanted it to be real, and specifically with her.
In a new interview with GQ ahead of the highly-anticipated premiere of Greta Gerwig's Barbie, where the actor plays Ken to Margot Robbie's Barbie, the father-of-two opened up about his absence from Hollywood, and how Eva and their daughters, Esmeralda Amada and Amada Lee, changed everything for him.
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Since his break-out role in 2004's The Notebook opposite Rachel McAdams, Ryan worked on several movies a year until 2014, the year he welcomed his first daughter with Eva, Esmeralda. They welcomed their second daughter in 2016, and though he had an Oscar-nominated role in La La Land the same year, after 2018, he didn't work on anything for four years, until 2022's The Gray Man.
"I wanted to spend as much time as I could with them," he tells GQ of his daughters and Eva, who despite their fame, lead a notoriously private life in a quiet town in Southern California, away from the hubbub of star-studded Los Angeles.
Recalling the moment he learned he was going to be a father, which he initially said was the first time he imagined himself as one, he says: "I would never want to go back, you know? I'm glad I didn't have control over my destiny in that way, because it was so much better than I ever had dreamed for myself."
© Moviestore/REX/ShutterstockRyan paints him and Eva's life together as inevitable, their very first meeting on The Place Beyond the Pines solidifying exactly what he hadn't realized he so wanted. Described as an overthinker by his Barbie co-star Margot, he later in the interview corrected his answer to when he first imagined himself as a father.
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He explains: "I think I said, I didn't think about kids until she told me she was pregnant. That's not really true. I didn't want to overshare, but now I also don't want to misrepresent," adding: "I mean, it's true that 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. 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."
© Dave Allocca/Starpix/REX/Shutterstock"I was looking for her, you know?" he adds, and when asked whether it was a conscious effort, he admits: "No. But it all makes sense now."
Painting a picture of what that destined, lucky life looks like, he says their life in their quiet California neighborhood features no nannies outside from relatives, they spend most of their time at home, with the exception of all four being on set with Ryan whenever he is working on a new project, which is why he deliberately does only one a year.
© InstagramAnd whenever the picture isn't so clear, like when they first met, Eva continues to be the one with all of the answers. He says: "I just lean on Eva. She knows what's important, always. She just somehow knows. So if ever I'm in my head about it, I just ask her."
© Rex Images
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