Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes perhaps have one of the cutest relationships going in Hollywood. While they remain relatively private about their love, The Hitch actress, 49, regularly shares how proud she is of her husband in his acting endeavors.
Meanwhile, Ryan has dedicated many an award to his wife - most notably during the Golden Globes when he won for La La Land and revealed that while he had been working, she had been "raising our daughter, pregnant with our second and trying to help her brother fight his battle with cancer".
The couple share daughters Esmerelda and Amada, respectively nine and seven years old. Ryan and Eva are super protective of their girls, with no public photos of them.
Here's everything you need to know about Ryan and Eva's daughters.
Esmeralda, 9
Ryan and Eva welcomed their first daughter, Esmeralda Amada, in Santa Monica, California on September 12 2014.
The couple had kept the pregnancy under wraps, and after the birth of Esmeralda, Eva took a break from acting to be a stay-at-home mom. She described the role as "way harder" than her acting career.
"People are so sweet — they really try to warn you, prep you, when you're pregnant, but nobody can prep you. Nobody," she confessed about motherhood.
Eva has since spoken about just how creative her eldest daughter is, as she said in a 2020 interview: "My 5-year-old cut her socks, the foot part off, and she likes to wear socks as sleeves."
"And the other day she wore underwear as a hat and I was like, 'That's amazing.' I wish I could do that. I can't."
Amada, 7
The couple welcomed their second daughter, Amada Lee, on April 29 2016. They named their second daughter after Eva's granddaughter, with the name meaning "beloved" in Spanish.
Sadly, Amada's birth coincided with the passing of Eva's brother, who died of cancer just 12 days before the baby was born.
Eva opened up about the tragedy to PEOPLE: "We had a funeral service for (Carlos) and that same week I had the baby. So it was really, really intense and obviously beyond heartbreaking, but also kind of beautiful."
Eva and Ryan's parenting style
Eva has described their parenting style as "controlling".
"I think what the term is — we're always laughing at these terms — I think we would be 'bulldozing parents,'", she joked. "We have to be on top of them every second ... The stakes are really high, so yeah, I'm a helicopter parent. And then I heard the bulldozing and I'm like, 'Ooh, yeah, I'm probably a bulldozing parent too.' "
Eva on motherhood
Eva has often expressed that she wants to maintain a close relationship with her daughters, revealing on Instagram: "I want my kids when they get in trouble later on in life … to be like, 'I gotta call my mom' versus, 'Ooh, I can’t tell my mom about this.'"
She revealed that she finds her kids' sense of freedom completely "inspiring", as they make choices that surprise her.
"They'll just be like, 'Can I wear socks on my hands today?' And I'm like, 'Yes, of course you can wear socks on your hands today.'" She told PEOPLE, adding "it's just such a freedom."
"Or they'll get a Halloween costume that we have hanging out and they'll wear that with pajama pants and a headband, and it's so cool," she added. "It's just such a freedom."
Ryan on fatherhood
Ryan revealed that before he met Eva, parenthood wasn't really on the agenda for him. He told GQ in 2023 that he "wasn’t thinking about kids before I met her, but after I met Eva, I realized that I just didn’t want to have kids without her."
Since having kids, Ryan has become a dedicated father as he also told the magazine he took on the role of Ken in 2023's blockbuster Barbie after seeing his daughters' treatment of the doll.
"I did see him [Ken], like, face down in the mud outside one day, next to a squished lemon, and it was like, 'This guy’s story does need to be told,' you know?"
