American actress and model Eva Mendes has opened up about her personal life. The 42-year-old actress talked how the death of her brother, Carlos Mendes, coincided with the birth of her daughter, Amada Gosling.
In an interview with Latina magazine, the Hitch star talked about losing her sibling to cancer. She said: "Losing my brother brought our family closer, and we were already close to begin with. So to just see everybody be there for one another and show up, I feel so lucky to have them. And then they were there for me when Amada was born. We had a funeral service for him and that same week I had the baby. So it was really, really intense and obviously beyond heartbreaking, but also kind of beautiful."
Adding on, Eva revealed she and her partner, Ryan Gosling chose their second daughter's name and ultimately decided to go with Amada. She said: "My grandmother's name is Amada, and Esmeralda Amada is the name of our oldest. We had a few names picked out for our new baby, and when she was born, we didn't feel like those names were her. We came up with a few more, even that morning, and tried them out. We were like, "What about Viviana?" But we just kept going back to Amada. In true Latin fashion, we reuse names all the time. I used to know five sisters that were all Maria del Carmen, Maria Elena, Maria Liliana..."
She added: "I actually told Ryan, 'This is common in Latin culture, so it wouldn't be crazy.' So we went with Amada because it was something we kept going back to. And it was an emotional time with the passing of my brother. We thought how beautiful to go with what made us emotional and with what felt like her. When we looked at her, we thought, 'Aww, Amadita.'"
