How old are Eva Mendes' kids? Actress talks about feeling lost but fulfilled now that they are growing up

Eva Mendes recently opened up about how her self-image changed when she first became a mom. She appeared as a guest on The Drew Barrymore Show on September 19, 2024.

The show host Barrymore talked about feeling lost when she had kids and asked Mendes if she ever felt the same. The actress replied:

"I felt very clear but then I felt lost, if that makes sense. Then when it was like the cliche of, 'Okay well, who am I now after the kids can survive on their own?'"

For the unversed, Eva Mendes shares two daughters with her actor husband, Ryan Gosling, whom she secretly married in 2011. Their kids, Esmeralda Amada and Amada Lee, are now 10 and 8 respectively.

Although Eva Mendes had initial misgivings in the early days of motherhood, she added that as her children grew, it felt "different." She mentioned that the shift from being a new parent to a mother of pre-teens made her very happy. She said:

"They don't need me every second. It's a little different. But I love talking to my girls about anything, so I feel very fulfilled."

---

Eva Mendes' kids watched her films, but they were "not impressed at all"

Eva Mendes stepped away from acting in 2014 to personally take on the role of raising her kids with the La La Land actor. During her chat with Drew Barrymore, she said that career would come and go, but kids would be "little once."

The actress appeared in another chat show on September 18, 2024 and talked about her kids. In the latest episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, she said that as her daughters got older, she started letting them watch some of the films she previously worked on, not only for entertainment but also for an opportunity to learn.

Mendes opened up to Jimmy Fallon about having her kids watch a scene from Hitch. She told the host that she was proud of the physical comedy stint she did on that scene despite feeling scared, and that was something she wanted to tell her kids. Mendes recalled:

"I played it for them, and I was like, 'This is mama facing her fear.' And, anyway, they were not impressed at all."

While the actress didn't specify if her kids' less-than-enthusiastic reaction was because of her acting or the "fear" she mentioned, the girls had the opposite reaction to their father's Barbie film. She told Fallon that the kids played "such a huge part" in making Ryan Gosling say yes for the role of Ken in the movie.

She joked about having 30 Barbie dolls in their house and there was only one Ken and Gosling thought that "there's something" there.

In another interview with Good Morning America on September 17, anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Eva Mendes if she was open to returning to acting, she said, "I don't know."

Mendes added:

"If there's interesting roles. I left at a time where it was also, 10 years ago. I kinda felt like I did it, ya know?"

The actress explained that when she took a hiatus from acting after Lost River (2014), where she worked with Gosling, it was such a high peak of her career. She thought that it was "a good time to, like Seinfeld it and just walk out."