Biography - Eva Mendes

Cuban-American stunner Eva Mendes is just getting started as a Hollywood star, and it’s practically guaranteed that her career has many fruitful years ahead. With her impressive acting chops and traffic-stopping looks, there really is no other outcome.

Mendes was born in Miami on March 5, 1974, and raised in L.A. by her Cuban parents. After graduating from Hoover High School in Glendale, CA, Mendes wanted to pursue a career in art history and attended California State – Northridge. However, she dropped out before finishing to pursue acting, which according to her just ‘fell in her lap’ after a friend showed pictures of her to an agent. She soon made her debut on an episode of “ER” in 1998, and for her first couple of years in Hollywood scraped by with bit parts in television and film, such as a walk-on in the Will Ferrell / “SNL” comedy “Night at the Roxbury.”

Her big break came in 2001 with a small role in the Oscar-winning Denzel Washington-Ethan Hawke vehicle “Training Day,” which saw Mendes disrobe for a scene. She was soon grabbing supporting roles in genre films like “2 Fast 2 Furious,” alongside Johnny Depp, Salma Hayek, and Antonio Banderas in “Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” and in the Farrelly Brothers conjoined twins laugher “Stuck on You” with Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear. The stunning actress has since moved on to lead roles in the blockbuster Will Smith comedy “Hitch” and in the 2007 comic book actioner “Ghost Rider” with Nicolas Cage. Her upcoming projects include James Gray’s “We Own the Night,” a thriller co-starring Robert Duvall, Mark Wahlberg, and Joaquin Phoenix.