Ryan Gosling calls Eva Mendes 'girl of my dreams'

Ryan Gosling has called Eva Mendes the “girl of my dreams” in a heartfelt speech.

The Barbie actor became emotional about his partner of 11 years during a speech on Saturday.

As he accepted the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, he noted how his career has changed his life. “Most importantly, I got to meet the girl of my dreams, Eva Mendes, and have two dream children,” he said.

“I dreamed of one day making movies, and now movies have made my life a dream. So the way I see it, there’s no way I’ve contributed half as much to cinema as cinema has contributed to me, but the idea that I might have given something back to the thing that has given so much to me is too great an honour for me to express.”

Ryan, 43, met Eva, 49, in 2011 when they were filming The Place Beyond The Pines. They have been together ever since, and now share two daughters, Esmeralda, nine, and Amada, seven.

The star also paid tribute to his mum, Donna, in his speech, calling her “deeply instrumental” in helping him achieve success and realise his love for the movie industry.

“When I was in the third grade, I had a swearing problem," he recalled. "My mother said it was almost impossible to get me to stop, but I remember the night she figured it out. We were at the dinner table and she said, ‘If you swear one more time, you can’t watch any movies tonight. And I thought that was extreme, so I used some extreme language back. She said, ‘OK, now you can’t watch movies for a week.'

It wasn’t until that exact moment that I realised just how much movies meant to me. It was the worst moment of my young life at that point.”