Ryan Gosling Says He Knew He Wanted Kids with Eva Mendes After They Played a Pretend Family on Screen

Ryan Gosling is opening up about his journey to becoming a dad.

The Barbie star, 42, who is on the cover of GQ's Global Summer Issue, tells the publication that he never planned to have children until he met his now-partner, Eva Mendes, 49 — and it's partially due to a movie they starred in together.

"I 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," he shares.

"And there were moments on The Place Beyond the Pines where we were pretending to be a family, and I didn’t really want it to be pretend anymore," he continues. "I realized that this would be a life I would be really lucky to have.”

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The La La Land actor also explained why he took a four-year-long break from acting, stating that he came to the decision after he and Mendes had their second child.

He says, "I wanted to spend as much time as I could with" his two daughters, Amada Lee, 7, and Esmeralda Amada, 8.

His break from acting also helped him establish clear boundaries between his personal life and his career.

“I treat it more like work now, and not like it’s, you know, therapy,” Gosling tells GQ. “It’s a job, and I think in a way that allows me to be better at it because there’s less interference.”

Last year, Mendes spoke to The Daily Telegraph about homeschooling her and Gosling's children while the couple travels for work.

"I don't do the homeschooling myself because I've tried that and it's not one of my strengths," she told the publication.

The actress added that she has a "strong belief" that you should "try to always keep a family together, no matter what you're doing."

"Especially when the children are small," she continued.

"We're lucky enough to have someone we travel with that can continue their education at this point, and what we do is we try to incorporate the city we're in as much as possible," Mendes added, noting that her kids have picked up "Aussie twangs" as the family recently spent some time in Australia.

In an August interview with heat magazine, Gosling talked about being a "dad first."

"I'm like a dad first, and part of the reason for doing the film [The Gray Man] was this opportunity for us to go to these interesting places and be there with my kids," he said, per The Daily Mail.

"You know it's funny, we went to France and we went everywhere - we went to the Louvre and all these things. And if I asked them now, 'What was your favorite part about France?' They will say, 'The fruit plate at the hotel,'" he revealed.