Originally appeared on E! Online
Eva Mendes is still learning new things about motherhood.
The “Hitch” actress has always been candid about life raising her and Ryan Gosling‘s daughters Esmeralda Amada, 10, and Amada Lee, 8. And that includes sharing how her feelings have changed as her daughters have grown up.
While she knows that a lot of new moms can feel “lost” early on in motherhood, the 50-year-old shared that for her that time shortly after giving birth “felt very clear.”
“But then, I felt lost, if that makes sense,” Mendes revealed on “The Drew Barrymore Show” Sept. 19. “Then when it was like the cliché of, ‘OK well, who am I now after the kids can survive on their own?'”
While her children are still young, “They don’t need me every second.”
“It’s a little different,” she added. “But I love talking to my girls about anything so I feel very fulfilled.”
Most recently, that’s included telling them about her acting career — although she suggested Esmeralda and Amada aren’t lining up for tickets anytime soon.
“It’s like, I tried to show them—this was about a year ago — I tried to show them a scene from “Hitch” that I was actually proud of, because I’m scared of deep, dark water,” the “Desi, Mami, and The Never-Ending Worries” author shared on “The Tonight Show” Sept. 18. “I had to do this physical comedy stunt thing in the Hudson. Anyway, I was so scared. So, I faced a fear that day and did this stunt, and I was proud of it.”
So Mendes was hoping the scene would help her daughters learn to face their own fears, and also give her a chance to “show off what I know.”
“I played it for them, and I was like, ‘This is Mama facing her fear,'” she recalled. “And, anyway, they were not impressed at all!”
Mendes joked, “They were just like, ‘Oh, cool, Mama! Can we go outside?'”
As for whether or not her children might see her on the big screen again after 10 years away from acting? Mendes is still undecided.
“I don’t know,” she recently said on “Good Morning America.” “If there’s interesting roles.”
But as she explained, she chose to step back from acting when she and Gosling started having kids, especially because she’d already achieved what many would consider a bucket list item.
“I was like, ‘I just worked with Ryan Gosling, who’s the best,'” she gushed about their time on 2012’s The Place Beyond the Pines. “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.'”
But Mendes isn’t writing it off completely, coyly adding, “Who knows?”
