Ryan Gosling never planned to have children until he met Eva Mendes.
Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes have two daughters together
The 'Barbie' actor got together with the 49-year-old actress after they starred in 'The Place Beyond the Pines' together and he admitted playing "pretend" in the 2012 movie gave him a glimpse of the personal life he would love to have.
Ryan - who has Esmeralda, eight, and seven-year-old Amada with Eva - told GQ's Global Summer issue: "I wasn’t thinking about kids before I met her, but after I met Eva, I realised 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 realised that this would be a life I would be really lucky to have.”
The 42-year-old star also explained he deliberately took a four-year break from acting after his second daughter was born.
He said: "I wanted to spend as much time as I could with them.”
Ryan never pictured himself as a parent until "Eva said she was pregnant" and he reflected that their life together with their children is "so much better" than he ever thought it could be.
He said: “I would never want to go back, you know? I’m glad I didn’t have control over my destiny in that way, because it was so much better than I ever had dreamed for myself.”
The 'La La Land' actor thinks his break made him a better actor because he no longer views it as "therapy".
He said: “I treat it more like work now, and not like it’s, you know, therapy.
"It’s a job, and I think in a way that allows me to be better at it because there’s less interference.”
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