Ryan Gosling Said His and Eva Mendes’s Daughters Were a ‘Tough Crowd’ During Quarantine

Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling are a notoriously private Hollywood couple, but every once in while, they open up about their relationship and their two daughters: Esmeralda, six, and Amada, four. 

We rounded up some of the cutest things they’ve ever said about each other and their family. Cue all the “awwws.” 

January 2022

In an interview with British GQ, Gosling reflected on how his kids are “growing up so fast.” “We spend a lot of our time trying to keep them entertained,” he said, adding, “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…[we did] more acting in quarantine than in our films. Tougher crowd, though.” In addition to home-schooling their two daughters, with help from Gosling’s mom, the pair screened one of Mendes’s more kid-friendly pictures, 1999’s My Brother The Pig. It “was a big hit,” Gosling  says.

October 2020

“I never wanted babies before until I fell in love with Ryan, and it kind of worked out to where I was 40 and having my first baby. I think I was 42 for the second one, so it worked out in that way that I had a career and then I change my focus to my family.” —Mendes, Nova 96.9’s Fitzy & Wippa

February 2020

“My two little girls are already these little self-empowered women. I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I need to get out of the way and you guys lead.’ Obviously, [I’ll] protect them, but I just want to get out of their way because they’re already these amazing creative beings.” —Mendes during a press conference 

September 2019

“It’s so fun and beautiful and maddening. It’s so hard, of course. But it’s like that feeling of…you end your day, you put them to bed and Ryan and I kind of look at each other like, ‘We did it, we did it. We came out relatively unscathed.’ I’m so thankful I have the opportunity to be home with them.” —Mendes, Access Daily

January 2017

“I just would like to try and thank one person properly and say that, while I was singing and dancing and playing piano and having one of the best experiences I’ve ever had on a film, my lady was raising our daughter, pregnant with our second, and trying to help her brother fight his battle with cancer. If she hadn’t taken all that one so I could have this experience, it would surely be someone else up here other than me. So sweetheart, thank you.” —Gosling, Golden Globes acceptance speech for La La Land

December 2016

“Your whole life you hear what it’s like to have kids, and all the clichés are true. I felt I knew that everything would be different, but until you experience that, there’s no way to really know what people mean. I only know what it’s like to have my kids. And in my situation, Eva’s the dream mother, and they’re dream babies, and it’s like a dream that I’m having right now. I’m dreaming it all. So I feel so lucky…. There’s a kind of chaos in it that I love. Maybe in my life I sort of put myself in situations that were chaotic, outside of my life. And now I have it at home, and I don’t have to go looking for it.” —Gosling, GQ

June 2016

“I think women are better than men. They are stronger, more evolved. You can tell, especially when you have daughters and you see their early stages, they are just leaps and bounds beyond boys immediately.” —Gosling, Evening Standard 

November 2014

“Whether we like it or not, privacy is going to be very difficult for Esmeralda. I think it’s unfair, but that’s our reality. So Ryan and I decided early on to give her as much privacy as we could. And my pregnancy was the first opportunity to give her that.” —Mendes, Violet Grey