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We Own the Night
Eva Mendes needed a stiff drink before embarking on one of the toughest scenes of her career in the steamy opening sex scene to the film We Own The Night.
The actress was understandably anxious about filming the sexy, intimate opening sequence of this stylish thriller in which she plays the beautiful girlfriend of nightclub manager Bobby Green (played by Joaquin Phoenix).
“Thank God that James shot it at the end of the film so I had a great rapport with Joaquin at that point. And I trusted them. I’ve certainly never shot anything as intimate before. It was really hard.
“I was actually crying because it was really hard for me to get there. And I told James and he said ‘How can I help you?’ And he was really patient. I said, “I guess there is just that little Catholic girl inside me that I didn’t know was still there.’
“And he goes ‘well, it’s time to tell her to go home because you are an artist now.’ And I think it was a combination of that and the Vodka. It was like ‘God, you are right. What am I doing? This is the job.’ It was a major moment of growth.
“But it was very difficult. If you have to hit somebody you fake it, you’re not really going to do it. But if somebody is fondling your private parts, there's no faking what you’re seeing on screen. You sit there and think ‘Oh my God, that’s really happening.’
“And you can’t get it out of your head. Like my dad can’t see this movie, my mum can’t see this movie! I’ve told them when they see it they have to get there 15 minutes late so they miss that scene.”
Mendes was born in Miami, the youngest of four children, and the family moved to Los Angeles when she was two. Her father ran a meat distribution business and her mother, also called Eva, worked as an accountant for an aerospace company. Her parents divorced when she was tiny.
“My family love what I do and they are very protective, I couldn’t ask for a more supportive bunch. We are very flawed as a family, very dysfunctional, and yet we love each other and we have each other’s backs in all situations.”
After school, she was studying marketing at California State University but without any real sense of what she would do after graduation. Fate took over when a photographer she knew asked to take some shots of her and that led to work on commercials and, eventually, film roles.
She left college to concentrate on her new career and found herself an acting coach. Her major breakthrough came starring opposite Denzel Washington who delivered an Oscar winning performance in Training Day.
She starred with Washington again in Out of Time and her impressive CV also includes 2 Fast 2 Furious, Stuck on You, Hitch, The Wendell Baker Story and Ghost Rider. She recently finished filming The Cleaner with Ed Harris and Samuel L. Jackson and The Women with Annette Bening and Meg Ryan.
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