Interview: Eva Mendes
Eva Mendes oozes sex appeal. A modern day Sophia Loren, this 34-year-old Latina beauty is proud of the voluptuous body that has made her both sultry pin-up and beauty icon alike. So it’s surprising to hear she once considered joining a convent. ‘I know!’ she giggles. ‘But my sister told me: “You know Eva, nuns don’t get paid.” So I said, “Forget it!” I’ve always wanted a better life financially.’
Mendes comes from humble roots. Born in Miami to Cuban immigrants, she was raised by her mother in LA after her parents separated. ‘It was a very working class family,’ she remembers. She dropped out of a marketing degree to pursue acting, starting with music videos for Will Smith and the Pet Shop Boys. Her big break came with Training Day (2001) and she has been gaining public recognition slowly ever since.
Ms Mendes is about to star in the remake of 1939 movie The Women, in which she plays a shop girl who ruffles the feathers of a group of high-society friends – including Annette Bening and Meg Ryan – after seducing one of their husbands. Eva enthuses: ‘It was a fantastic experience. We made it relevant to today and the issues we face as women.’ Many actresses would be wary of playing a character portrayed so memorably by Joan Crawford in the original, but Eva’s attitude is typically fearless. ‘I’m going to get a lot of shit for that one,’ she smiles. ‘But I’m ready for it! No way did I try to copy what she did. I definitely took it on as my own.’
Eva turns down scripts that reduce her to a tokenistic ‘babe’. ‘Being considered sexy isn’t a bad thing as long as it doesn’t trap you in the same kinds of roles. I want people to see that I can play a whole variety of roles, not just the voluptuous babe. I’ve always had high hopes for myself.’ Her careful choices are paying off. Today, she’s hot property with multi-million dollar movie offers, plenty of sexy magazine covers under her belt, and major contracts with companies like Calvin Klein (who recently had to pull an ad featuring the actress as it was deemed too racy for US audiences). Her ambition to succeed is underpinned by the politics of being a Latino woman in Hollywood. Racial prejudice is changing, she observes, ‘but at a very slow place. It’s difficult to be a woman in Hollywood and it’s really difficult to be an ethnic woman in Hollywood. I’m constantly fighting for roles. It makes me hungrier and I will win.’
Read the full interview in our September 2008 issue.
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