Eva de la Caridad Méndez, known professionally as Eva Mendes (/ˈmɛndɛz/; born March 5, 1974), is an American actress and businesswoman. Her acting career began in the late 1990s, with a series of roles in films such as Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998) and Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000).
Mendes’s performance in Training Day (2001) marked a turning point in her career and led to parts in the commercially successful films 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) and Hitch (2005). She starred in Ghost Rider (2007) and The Spirit (2008), both film adaptations of comics, and ventured into more dramatic territory with We Own the Night (2007), Bad Lieutenant (2009), Last Night (2010), and The Place Beyond the Pines (2012). Her other films include Out of Time (2003), The Women (2008), The Other Guys (2010), and Girl in Progress (2012).
