Eva Mendes on quitting acting: "I got tired fighting for good roles"

Since her last on-screen role in husband Ryan Gosling’s 2014 film Lost River, Eva Mendes has mostly disappeared from the acting world, focusing instead on other business ventures like becoming the co-owner of fancy sponge brand Skura Style. Now, the Hitch star revealed in a recent interview with Variety that her reason behind quitting Hollywood revolved around a lack of “good roles.”

“I got tired fighting for the good roles,” said Mendes. “There just was a point where I thought, ‘I’m going to create my own opportunities and become a producer on things and create my own material,’ but it just didn’t feel worth it to me.”

The Training Day actor added, “There are more opportunities for Latina actresses now, but when I bowed out 10 years ago I wasn’t being offered things that weren’t specifically Latina. It is exciting that things are different now, so who knows what I will do in the future. But right now, I’m keeping it in the home with my kids.”

Before her breakout role as Denzel Washington’s mistress Sarah in Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day, Mendes had her first film role in the 1998 direct-to-video horror flick Children Of The Corn V: Fields Of Terror. Throughout the rest of her career, Mendes would go on to star in blockbusters like 2 Fast 2 Furious and quieter dramas like 2012's The Place Beyond The Pines. She even semi-unretired for a voiceover role in the Australian animated kid’s show Bluey, playing a yoga instructor in a 2021 episode.

That said, don’t expect Mendes to return to the big screen anytime soon, as the actor told Variety that she doesn’t “really miss it.” But who knows? She spoke on The View earlier this year that in order to return to acting, the right role couldn’t contain any violence or sexuality. That unfortunately takes her out of making a surprise cameo in Fast X, which would have benefitted from a bit of ass-kicking by U.S. Customs Agent Monica Fuentes.