Why Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling Are So Protective of Their Privacy

Inside Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes’ Private Relationship

Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling are each other’s teammates in life. 

And considering the couple tend to keep their relationship out of the public eye rather than put it on a podium, fans were thrilled to see them at the 2024 Olympics.

Mendes and Gosling attended the women’s gymnastics uneven bars final at Paris’ Bercy Arena on Aug. 4 with daughters Esmeralda, 9, and Amada, 8. While the Hitch star acknowledged her “wall goes up” when she sees photographers, she expressed her appreciation for how the family’s privacy was respected while they watched Suni Lee take home the bronze. 

“I love @nbcolympics didn’t cut away to the kids!” Mendes wrote on Instagram in response to a commenter Aug. 6. “And most sites blurred their faces so mama bear is happy about that. Anyway it felt so good to be there and feel unified with people.”

Though Mendes and Gosling prefer to keep their private life, well, private, it means nothing as far as the overall health of their decade-plus relationship. Rather…status quo, friends. Status quo.

Because, in case you hadn’t noticed in the almost 13 years they’ve been a couple, the pair don’t do red carpets. They last took a photo on one at the March 28, 2013, New York premiere of the film that brought them together, The Place Beyond the Pines.

And not that Mendes was ever the most splashily out there of actresses, but once she and Gosling became an item she started paring back considerably on public appearances and rededicated her social media to business pursuits.

Of course, it’s not as if her 6 million followers haven’t been treated to an array of eye candy over the years, Mendes being a style and beauty icon, after all. But it was some time before she re-cracked the window into her private world. 

And that didn’t always go so well, people being awfully quick with a bad take or nasty comment in this day and age.

Not usually one to wade into the fray, in early 2021 Mendes clapped back at a commenter who had speculated that she wasn’t posting much because she’d had “work done” and was unhappy with the results. 

“I’m posting less because I really want to be present for my family,” the 2 Fast 2 Furious alum interjected. “My little ones need me and posting takes up too much time. As far as getting work done, I’ll do that whenever I please. But no, that’s not the reason. The reason is I personally cannot juggle family and social media.”

Not that it was news that Mendes was gaga for the La La Land star, but the first rule of their relationship for years was that they didn’t talk about their relationship.

They did go out—to parties and restaurants, of course, and it’s practically mandatory in Los Angeles that celebrities hike—but the couple’s photographed public life since they met on set in 2011 takes up a relatively tiny portion of the Cloud.

But once they had moved beyond the Pines, Mendes and Gosling quickly reverted to being one of the most elusive pairs in Hollywood, giving up nothing about their romance. 

“I know that I’m with the person I’m supposed to be with,” he tersely told ET Canada in 2015. Asked what it was that drew him to her, he replied, “That she’s Eva Mendes. There’s nothing else I’m looking for.”

They were on the same page about what they were looking for, meanwhile, because Mendes told Women’s Health in April 2019 that having kids was “the furthest thing from my mind,” until she met the one person who fit the bill.

“Ryan Gosling happened,” she explained. “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.”

Ironically, in 2011, Gosling told The Times in London that he’d actually like to be making babies, but wasn’t, so he was trying to keep busy in the meantime.

“When someone comes along, I don’t think I’ll be able to do both and I’m fine with that,” he added. “I’ll make movies until I make babies.”

He had three extremely different films in theaters that year: the rom-com Crazy, Stupid, Love, the violent thriller Drive and the political drama The Ides of March.

Yet he managed, while making babies (if not at exactly the same time), to shoot The Big Short, The Nice Guys and La La Land. And, fully aware of how he was able to keep at it, he astutely thought to give credit where it was due in a very public setting.

“If she hadn’t taken all that on so that I could have this experience, it would surely be someone else up here other than me today—so,” he looked intently into the camera, “sweetheart, thank you. To my daughters, Amada and Esmeralda, I love you.” (And then he dedicated his award to the memory of Eva’s brother, Juan Carlos Méndez Jr., who died in April 2016, 12 days before Amada was born.)

In the moment, that was an unprecedented glimpse behind closed doors from Gosling, who usually prefers to talk about literally anything other than his private life in interviews. Asked about Christmas presents for Mendes and the kids in 2016 on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Gosling charmingly pivoted to saying he wanted to get a new Roomba to help out his existing Roomba, because he felt so bad that the first one was always tirelessly cleaning.

Meanwhile, Mendes hasn’t been in a movie since Gosling directed her in Lost River, which they made in 2013 and was released in 2015.

But, make no mistake, her pivot to fashion and other pursuits—including her children’s book Desi, Mami & the Never Ending Worries—was on purpose. And she has relished being a mom first and foremost.

“Every day,” Mendes replied. “And people are so sweet, they really try to, like warn you, prep you when you’re pregnant—but nobody can prep you. Nobody. And nobody told me it was really going to be a job. And a job that I needed an incredible amount of skills for—like in different areas!”

She added, deadpan, “A chauffeur, a cook, a personal assistant to an abusive boss. And they’re not grateful!” Mendes turned to the audience with a smile. “Do they get grateful?” she asked. “Does it happen at some point?”

She and Clarkson, also a mother of two, proceeded to have a good laugh about the joys and bittersweet hilarity of parenting. “And any other profession you would need to take a test, or pass tests,” Mendes added. “The only test I had to pass was a pregnancy test.”

Asked to name the most difficult part of motherhood, she quipped, “The amount of snacks I have to carry with me all day long…I even need to take food in the car to go to the market!”

“I have always had a clear boundary when it comes to my man and my kids,” Mendes explained to an Instagram commenter in April 2020 when asked, if she was so uncertain of what to post with the world gone haywire, why not just share some family photos? “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. As far as Ryan and I, it just works for us this way, to stay private.”

They also can’t help that they simply like being at home with each other and their girls.

“I just think now that I’m older and that I’m a mother, I would obviously choose my roles differently,” she said. “I’m just a walking example for these girls and I take that very seriously, so it would have to be something that feels appropriate and that would still be fun for me. It’s a lot of parameters, you know? But yes, I would be very excited.”

And though she couldn’t predict that she’d one day be co-starring with her in-house leading man in a 24/7 production of “The Pandemic Chronicles,” at the time Mendes was 100-percent down to work with Gosling again.

“My most fun experience was being on set with him when he was directing,” she said. “It was really so creatively satisfying being in it together, and he’s such an amazing director. I would love that experience again, for sure.”

As for Gosling, he told E! News at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in January—where he was flying solo, as usual—that his “greatest experience” making a film was costarring with Mendes 13 years ago, so he hoped they’d work together again one day.

And should that ever come to pass, we will not take it for granted.

Case in point: We’ve cherished every bit of evidence of their romance, so keep reading to follow the trail: