Why Eva Mendes Disappeared From Hollywood

When she's not busy mothering her daughters, Eva Mendes has spent the last decade supporting her husband, Ryan Gosling, in his career in the spotlight and working on other successful projects outside of the acting industry. Speculation over Mendes' disappearance from Hollywood left the media assuming that she retired, but the actor made it very clear in a 2022 post on Instagram: "I never quit."

Mendes broke onto the scene in the 2001 crime thriller, "Training Day." Since then, the multi-hyphenate has starred in a number of blockbusters, including "Ghost Rider" (2007), "Hitch" (2005), and "The Other Guys" (2010), per IMDb. Her last role was in 2014 when she played a part in "Lost River," a film directed by Gosling. Gosling and Mendes share two daughters, who drove the model to step away from acting — among many other reasons.

Her Hollywood hiatus began when she gave birth to her daughter, Esmeralda, in 2014. Two years later, in 2016, Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling welcomed their youngest daughter, Amada. While Mendes keeps her kids away from the spotlight, she has opened up about being a mother, and why she left fame behind to take on that role. "Your career comes and goes but kids, yeah, that was easy for me," she told People of her decision to halt her acting career. "They're just formative years. I wanted to be there for all of it."

Mendes opened up on the "Today" show about how she and Gosling came to an agreement that he would continue acting, while she became the stay-at-home parent. "It was like a no-brainer," the businesswoman said. "I'm so lucky, and I was like, 'If I can have this time with my children' — and I still work, I just don't act because acting takes you on locations, it takes you away. It was almost just a non-verbal agreement."

Luckily for Eva Mendes, acting was not a passion she mourned after taking a break from the industry. "I was never in love with acting," Mendes told The Sunday Times in 2024. "I don't mean this in a self-deprecating way, but I wasn't a great actress. I had my moments when I worked with really great people." The work she is most proud of from her years in the industry was the two projects that she worked on with Ryan Gosling. "He gets something out of me that's never been accessible before."

Mendes calls that era her peak, telling George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning America," "It was such a high off 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.'" The actor confessed that she would consider taking on another acting role if the project was compelling enough.

When you don't love your job, it's hard to battle for success. That is something Eva Mendes learned while auditioning in Hollywood. "I got tired fighting for the good roles," she told Variety in 2022. "There just was a point where I thought, 'I'm going to create my own opportunities and become a producer on things and create my own material,' but it just didn't feel worth it to me."

Not only were the good roles hard to come by, but Mendes says that as a Latina actor, she was often dismissed. "There are more opportunities for Latina actresses now, but when I bowed out 10 years ago I wasn't being offered things that weren't specifically Latina," revealed Mendes.

The actor was often type-casted as the beautiful supporting female role. Her Cuban heritage made it nearly impossible to climb out of the stereotypes written into her characters. In her 2024 interview with The Sunday Times, Mendes 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."

By no means does Eva Mendes have a free schedule now that she has stepped away from acting. Aside from being a mom, Mendes has worked on her own creative ventures, only this time, she's her own boss. In 2022, Mendes became the co-owner of Skura Style, a stylish cleaning product company founded by Linda Sawyer and Alison Matz in 2017. "I started using it and I loved it, so I got in contact with the founders and I loved their story," she told Forbes in 2024. She not only has a keen eye for design, but Mendes has a passion for behind-the-scenes administrative work. "I want to be on those investor calls, I want to talk about the boring stuff, like how high our box has to be in order to fit into a certain shelf. I'm in for all of it."

Mendes has also added "author" to her resumé. In the summer of 2024, Mendes announced the launch of her children's picture book, "Desi, Mami & the Never Ending Worries," about a little girl dealing with disquieted thoughts. In the caption of an Instagram post about the story, Mendes wrote: "Don't believe every thing you think. Whether it was the monster under my bed or the monster in my head, I've been an anxious nail biter all my life."

Before kids, Eva Mendes didn't have a problem with choosing projects featuring mature content. But now as a mom, she says that the family-friendly route would be the only way she will veer back into acting. "I have such a short list of what I will do," she said in a 2022 interview on "The View" (via the New York Post). "Before kids, I mean, if it was a fun project — but now I won't do violence, I don't want to do sexuality; the list is short." When asked if she would take on a film that meets her standards, she said: "I hope so. It has to be nice and clean." She feels Disney would be a perfect fit for her new criteria.

Notably, Mendes joined the Bluey Book Reads universe in 2024, reading the story, "Mum School," for the narrative series. She was also the voice of a yoga instructor in an episode of the popular Australian kid's show behind the book series. In 2020, the actor told the Australian outlet Now To Love that "Bluey" is very popular in her house. "They love 'Bluey' and we love 'Bluey' and we watch it a lot," she said, joking, "I think we've seen them all like twice over. We've binged 'Bluey.'"