All the emotions. While accepting the Golden Globe for Best Actor on Sunday, January 8, La La Land actor Ryan Gosling made sure to give a huge shout-out to his real-life partner, Eva Mendes, in his acceptance speech.
The beloved star opened his remarks with a joke about how he’s oftentimes compared to another fellow Canadian A-lister, who was also at the show with his beautiful wife on Sunday. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been mistaken with Ryan Reynolds, but it’s getting out of hand,” Gosling said as the audience laughed. “You don’t get to be up here without standing on the shoulders of a mountain.”
His tone then turned serious. “I would like to try to thank one person properly and say—while I was singing and dancing and playing piano and having one of the best experiences I’ve ever had on a film—my lady was raising our daughter, pregnant with our second, and trying to help her brother fight his battle with cancer,” Gosling noted in his emotional speech. “If she hadn’t have taken all that on so that I could have this experience, it would surely be someone else up here other than me today. So, sweetheart, thank you.”
Mendes’ sibling passed away last April after succumbing to cancer. The actress did not attend the star-studded ceremony at The Beverly Hilton on Sunday, but Gosling said in an interview that she was taking care of their two daughters—Esmeralda, 2, and Amada, 8 months, at home.
Gosling made sure to call out his little ones in the final moments of his speech. “To my daughters, I love you,” he said. “And if I may, I would like to dedicate this to the memory of [Eva’s] brother, Juan Carlos Mendes.”
