This is where their love story began.

(Image credit: Focus Features)

In Ryan Gosling’s best romances, we’ve seen him fall in love on screen many times. However, his real-life love story with Eva Mendes might be the sweetest of all. The two met on the set of The Place Beyond the Pines in 2011, and in the years since they’ve gotten married and share two kids. Now, the Barbie actor has candidly opened up about his relationship with his partner, and the origins of their love story.

In The Place Beyond the Pines, Gosling and Mendes play two lovers who share a child, and they have a complicated past and a violent present. The story is dark, and the drama is heavy, however, the love story that came out of it in reality is not. While speaking with GQ about his wife and kids, the La La Land star explained that he realized he wanted to be with his now-wife in real life after sharing the screen with her, he said:

When you asked me about Eva and kids. I think I said, I didn’t think about kids until she told me she was pregnant. That’s not really true. I didn’t want to overshare, but now I also don’t want to misrepresent. I mean, it’s true that 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. 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. I realized that this would be a life I would be really lucky to have.

This couple is very private, as Gosling noted, they don’t want to “overshare.” So, comments like this are few and far between, but when we get them they’re the sweetest thing ever.

After meeting in 2011, rumors swirled that Gosling and Mendes got married in 2016, and in 2022 the actress confirmed it, per Harper’s Bazaar. Over those years, they had two daughters — the first was born in 2014 and the second in 2016 — and they’ve always been very supportive of one another.

As some of Ryan Gosling’s most memorable characters made their way to the big screen, his partner was there to hype him up. Mendes took to social media to show off her hubby as Ken in Barbie, and she even broke her own rule by posting photos of Gosling kissing Emily Blunt in The Fall Guy, because she loved it so much.

This is also a two-way street. The Notebook actor has hyped up his spouse in interviews many times, even wearing a shirt to promote her children’s book, Desi, Mami & The Neverending Worries, throughout The Fall Guy’s promotional tour (via Us Weekly). Plus, when Barbie came out, he rocked an E necklace to the premiere.

Considering the sweet ways Gosling and Mendes have shown up for each other publicly over the years, it’s unsurprising that the origins of their love story were just as precious.

To go back and see the movie where they met, you can buy or rent The Place Beyond the Pines on Amazon. To see what Ryan Gosling is up to right now, you can catch The Fall Guy, which premiered on the 2024 movie schedule earlier this year, on VOD. As for Eva Mendes, you can find her picture book Desi, Mami & The Neverending Worries wherever you get your books. When it comes to these two and their real-life love story, we’ll be sure to keep you updated.