Eva Mendes Recalls Being Wowed by Ryan Gosling After First Meeting: 'I've Never Experienced Anything Like That'

Eva Mendes is recalling working with her partner Ryan Gosling.

Mendes, 50, appeared on the Today show Tuesday and spoke to meeting Gosling, 43, when they made their 2012 movie The Place Beyond the Pines.

“I’ve never experienced anything like that," she said of working with her now-partner. "The way he works, his commitment to his craft, how he wants to make everything as best as it can be — and that means making his costars as best as they can be."

"Unfortunately — or fortunately — there's only one Ryan, so I pretty much stopped acting after that," she added.

Mendes and Gosling began dating after meeting on The Place Beyond the Pines' set. Mendes' IMDb page credits her with just six acting roles since that movie's release, with only one film credit, for 2014's Lost River, which Gosling wrote and directed as his directorial debut.

Gosling and Mendes, who are private about their relationship, share two daughters together. The couple welcomed their first child, Esmeralda Amada, in September 2014, and added Amada Lee to the family in April 2016. While speaking with Today, Mendes shared that taking a step back from acting after more than a decade onscreen was not a difficult decision to make.

"It was like a no-brainer. I'm so lucky, and I was like, if I could have this time with my children — and I still work, I just didn't act, because acting takes you on location," she said. "It takes you away."

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"It was almost just like a non-verbal agreement that it was like, 'Okay, he's going to work and I'm going to work. I'm just going to work here,' " she added of her and Gosling's decision.

Gosling and Mendes made waves on the internet during and after the recent 96th Oscars ceremony.

The Barbie star performed a memorable live version of "I'm Just Ken" during the broadcast, and Mendes shared a post on Instagram following the performance imploring her partner to return home. "You took Ken all the way to the Oscar’s, RG," she wrote at the time. "Now come home, we need to put the kids to bed. 💋”

"That's what it's about — you go, you do your job the best you can, and then you come home," Mendes told Today, when asked about the Oscars night post.