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Jul 22, 2023

Eva Mendes names her five favourite movies of all time

Eva Mendes rose to prominence in the late 1990s with central roles in several

Eva Mendes rose to prominence in the late 1990s with central roles in several successful movies, including the Stephen King adaption Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror and Urban Legends: Final Cut. However, her major break came following her performance in Antoine Fuqua's blockbusting 2001 film Training Day, which saw Denzel Washington scoop the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of crooked cop Alonzo Harris.

With elevated Hollywood status, Mendes enjoyed a stretch of memorable appearances in popular movies over the ensuing decade, including 2 Fast 2 Furious, Hitch, Ghost Rider, and We Own the Night.

In 2011, Mendes became close with Ryan Gosling on the set of Derek Cianfrance's 2012 movie A Place Beyond the Pines. The pair began to date around that time, and although they have kept their relationship private, it has been reported that they are now happily married and have two daughters. In 2014, she starred in Gosling's directional debut Lost River, which marked the beginning of a hiatus in her acting career to focus on parenting.

Beyond her acting work, Mendes is a distinguished presence in the fashion industry as both a model and designer. Her work includes collaborations with Calvin Klein, Cartier, Reebok, Pantene shampoo, Morgan and Peek & Cloppenburg. In 2008, Mendes was asked to name and discuss her five favourite films of all time for a Rotten Tomatoes feature.

Below we reveal her brilliant cinematic taste.

For her first selection, Mendes picked out the 1996 British drama Secrets & Lies. The movie stars Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn and Phyllis Logan and follows the story of Hortense, a Black middle-class optometrist living in London. She was adopted as a baby and later decides to trace her family history to find her birth mother, Cynthia.

"I’m a huge Mike Leigh fan and would love to work with him," Mendes said. "His approach to filming sounds fascinating and exciting. I understand that he doesn't give his actors a script but instead hands them scenes and encourages improvisation. I’m not sure if this is indeed his process, but the result is nothing short of beautiful intimate moments. And this film is full of them! At times it feels so intimate it's almost voyeuristic. To me, that's what makes a performance really exciting … when you’re almost embarrassed to be peeking into people's lives. And that happens a lot in this perfect emotional drama."

Next up, Mendes picked out Werner Herzog's 1982 classic, Fitzcarraldo. The West German adventure epic stars Klaus Kinski as Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an aspiring rubber baron who audaciously attempts to transport a steamship over a steep hill to access a rubber trading hotspot in the Amazon Basin.

"I had the pleasure of working with the director of this film, Werner Herzog, recently," Mendes said. "He is one of my all-time favourite filmmakers. In Fitzcarraldo, he manages to bring an opera house into a Peruvian jungle. What an amazing concept!"

Sidney Lumet's Network is nearly five decades old, but the experimental style and dark satire feel just as fresh in the modern day. Starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch and Robert Duvall, the movie follows a fictional television network, UBS, as it grapples with poor ratings. Network was a commercial and critical success, scooping up four Oscars at the 49th Academy Awards.

"Duvall, Dunaway, Finch, Holden and Ned Beatty… are you kidding?… This film is as true today as it was when they made it over 30 years ago. It's just amazing how little things haven't changed since then…. Faye Dunaway kills it in this film. Her body language is so precise, and her character's ambition is simply frightening. Ned Beatty's monologue alone makes this one worth watching."

The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, are responsible for some of the finest and most stylistically idiosyncratic movies of the past 30 years, including Raising Arizona, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Fargo, and No Country for Old Men. In 1998, the pair released their defining indie comedy, The Big Lebowski, starring Jeff Bridges, a Vietnam veteran who gets inadvertently involved in a spiralling crime plot.

"I would die to work with the Coen Brothers," Mendes said. "I love their sense of humour. This film is hysterical on so many levels, but I guess it's the diverse group of characters that really gets to me. Jeff Bridges is perfection as ‘the dude’, and Julianne Moore kills it as Maude, but my favourite may be John Turturro as ‘Jesus.’ To me, this is a perfect comedy. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack is SICK!!!"

Landing directly between Delicatessen and Amélie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet teamed up with Marc Caro for this 1995 international effort. The science fiction Cannes Film Festival favourite follows Daniel Emilfork as Krank, an old man who has lost the ability to dream. In an attempt to stave off death, he resorts to stealing the dreams of young children.

"Nobody portrays children in cinema better than the French," Mendes opined. "Jeunet and Caro direct the amazing Ron Perlman in this surrealist fairy tale. He plays a scientist that kidnaps children so he can steal their dreams in hopes of slowing down his own ageing process. So beautiful, so French."