Ryan Gosling opens up on family life with Eva Mendes and their daughters
Watch: Ryan Gosling struggled to 'entertain' daughters during Covid-19 lockdown
Most Hollywood power-couples are delighted to double the publicity and seldom step out of the spotlight. For actors Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes, however, privacy is the key to family life.
They seldom speak about their relationship or their children - but this week, Gosling broke the careful habit in an interview with British GQ Magazine.
The actor, 41, talked about family life with Eva and daughters Esmeralda, 7, and Amada, 5. The couple met on the set of movie The Place Beyond the Pines in 2011, and have been together since.
Speaking about time passing, he said, "It's something I think about a lot now" adding that their kids "are growing up so fast I need to keep an eye on the clock in a way I never used to."
He also talked about lockdown life in 2020 and 2021, saying, "Our kids were at a difficult age not to be able to see other kids and interact with people, even though Eva and I did our best."
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He explained that the couple read books to their daughters, putting on the voices and acting them out, and joked that they did "more acting in quarantine than in our films. Tougher crowd, though."
Gosling also explained that his children are too small to watch most of his hit movies, and added that it's difficult for them to understand what's real.
Reportedly, Esmeralda saw her dad's fight scene with Harrison Ford on the set of 2017 movie Blade Runner 2049 and shouted "You're winning!" mid-take.
"What about me?" asked Ford. The girls also assumed that Gosling worked on the moon when he played Neil Armstrong in 2018's First Man.
Humour aside, the couple take their children's right to privacy very seriously.
In 2020, Mendes told an Instagram follower, "I have a clear boundary when it comes to my man and my kids.
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"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. And I won't post their image until they're old enough to give me consent."
The actress has talked about them occasionally - and opened up to Kelly Clarkson on her talk show in 2019. She told the singer, "it's like Halloween in our house every day."
"They're constantly dressing up - our kids are obsessed with the Wizard of Oz, they've been Dorothy every year."
She also confided, "people are so sweet - they try to prep you (for parenthood) when you're pregnant, but nobody can prep you, nobody.
"Nobody told me it was going to be a job I needed an incredible amount of skills for in different areas - a chauffeur, a cook, a personal assistant to an abusive boss...they're not grateful! Do they get grateful?" She asked, laughing.
"Any other profession you'd have to pass a test - the only one I had to pass was a pregnancy test."
She also told Clarkson, "the hardest part is the amount of snacks I have to carry with me all day long.
"Long car rides, those are the worst - even if we're going to the market, I have to take food to the market, in the car."
Asked whether she and Gosling are similar in their parenting style, Eva thought that they were.
"We're the same, we're very controlling," she laughed. "I think we would be 'bulldozing parents'. I also heard of the term 'helicopter parents' - but what are we supposed to do? They're this big! we have to be on top of them, every second!"
More seriously, asked about her personal style by Clarkson, Mendes added, "I went through a period (after children) where there was really no sense of style - or sense of self, really. I kind of lost myself a little bit there."
Watch: Eva Mendes shares a rare throwback photo of her and Ryan Gosling
