As the intrepid TV reporter who sets her childhood love Johnny Blaze’s heart (and not his skull) on fire in Ghost Rider, effervescent Eva Mendes makes her first foray into the world of superhero movies, but in our freewheeling conversation Hollywood.com learned that she may be donning her own heroic costume in the future as…Super Taco? Okay, it’s cuter when she tells it:
Hollywood.com: You’re not an orginal fangirl when it comes to the comic books, so what attracted you to this project?
Eva Mendes: I’ve been wanting to work with Nicolas [Cage] for a while. I do that: I kind of like look around and think about who I want to hit next as far as my wish list of actors, and Nicolas has been on that for a while. So when I heard that this project was with him I met with Mark [Steven Johnson]. I had obviously known Mark’s work and then I was like, “Okay, this is me.” Then Mark – I just fell in love with him. We totally get each other’s sense of humor…We had this agreement. I said, “I’m dying to work with you now and Nic, but don’t make me just the chick in the movie. Give her some obstacle, some struggle.” Obviously, I play a reporter as well and so I wasn’t just some little girl, but Mark is amazing.
HW: So Roxanne’s not just a damsel in distress?
EM: She kind of is, which there is something kind of sexy about, but that’s not all she is. There is something kind of sweet and innocent that we wanted to keep about that, but she wasn’t a victim. It’s kind of hard to see that in terms of how are you not a victim if you’re a damsel in distress. So we kind of played with that a bit. You always feel like she’s going to be okay without him, but that’s the thing – she’s going to be just okay without him. She’s not going to great. Just okay. She’s going to be so much better with him. So it was kind of a little heartbreaking little story.
HW: What did you learn from watching Nic at work?
EM: That you can take any material and make it your own and very interesting. What I really learned from him is that you prepare for a scene and you’re going to work tomorrow to do that scene, and you don’t know what the other person is going to do, but you expect that the scene is going to go a certain way and it’s written in a certain way. So he would come in every time and he would flip those lines and he played the not obvious part of the line. I thought, “God, this is so interesting.” I was like, “How do you do that? I want to do that?” It’s so cool that he can turn everything on its head and that’s what I really learned about him. It was to not play the obvious scene and to really take chances, and make the choices differently.
HW: How is Mark as an action director compared to two others you’ve worked with, Robert Rodriguez and John Singleton?
EM: Oh my God, they’re all kind of similar especially in the sense that they’re all little boys, which is really cool to see. It’s fun to see these grown men become little boys and play around. But Mark, he and I are the same. We’re so similar. He would say something and I would just get it. He barely wouldn’t come up to me and I would get it. We were just so on the same wavelength. I was just there from day one.
HW: Have you always been attracted to biker guys? Are you a biker chick?
EM: No. I’m not a biker chick, but I’d love to play one [Laughs]. I like edge with my guys, so if it’s a bike then great. I think it’d be fun to date one, but it wouldn’t be fun to settle down with one because then I would be a worried wreck every night. “Call me as soon as you get there.” Because it’s so dangerous. So the dating aspect of a biker guy is a fun idea.
HW: So you like the bad boy?
EM: No. I like good boys that are sometimes bad. I got that down. I know exactly what I like. I’ve always know. I really do at the end of the day like a sweet, good, strong man, but I do like a little edge. A little crooked there.
HW: When the guys who are uber-fans like Mark and Nic start talking about the Ghost Rider mythology do you pretend that you know what you’re talking about?
EM: No. I just get up and get some coffee and let the boys talk. I’m like, “You guys need anything? You good?” No. They actually educated me quite a bit. It was cool that they were really open to educating me because both of them together, I really couldn’t get a word in edgewise if I had a word to put in because they were just so cute together. They could talk comic books for hours and it’s really cute.
HW: Did you go back and look at the original Ghost Rider Comics?
EM: I did actually. I looked back and Roxanne Simpson is obviously very different from me. I was like, “So, she’s blonde and Caucasian, blue eyed—not me.” But I hope that the comic book fans don’t reject that. I hope that they accept me for another version of Roxanne. So what I did realize what I could do was that – I swear this is so silly of me, but hopefully it works – I realized she was very, very voluptuous in all the comic books. She had massive boobage and hips, and I was like, ‘Okay, why don’t I not watch what I eat so much and let the fun stuff grow.’ So I let the fun stuff grow because at least that way I could give them the voluptuous part. Hopefully they won’t be disappointed [Laughs].
HW: With the voluptuous thing, was it fun to relax and not worry about the Hollywood shape?
EM: It was so awesome, dude. It’s not like I let myself go. It wasn’t like I was gaining weight for a role like I was stuffing my face or something. It was more just like, ‘Yeah. I’ll have that second serving. I’m tired. I’m not going to the gym today.’
HW: Did you feel sexier?
EM: I actually did believe it or not because my bajungas were big. That’s the technical terms, but yeah, it was really nice. It was like, “Wow, this is cool.” It helped me to get into character. Let’s say that. The Cuban side of me came out. It’s the side of me that’s dying to come out. It’s like, “Let me out! Come on, please!” I’m like, “No! You stay in there you Cuban lady!”
HW: What are your favorite comic books, aside from Ghost Rider?
EM: I just love the idea of Spider-Man, which is funny because I’m totally arachnophobic, but I think that it’d be cool if one of them bit me and then no one could ever touch me again, and I could be like, “I rule the world!” Is that weird? Am I weird? I just like the themes. I love good versus evil. I obviously love good prevailing over evil, so this is really exciting to me.
HW: Having visited two ComiCons now, have you discovered your inner geek?
EM: I discovered that in the seventh grade. Are you kidding me? Totally. I love it when people are that passionate. I love seeing the people who dress their kids up. I think that it’s really cool.
HW: You also see the 30-year-olds dressed up.
EM: I know, I know! But when they look like a whole little family unit walking around as aliens, I think it’s so cute. It’s kind of like Halloween for grownups and Halloween is my favorite holiday. I go nuts for Halloween. So it’s kind of a way for adults to express themselves like kids again.
HW: So are we going to see you dress up for the next ComiCon?
EM: You know what, that’d be interesting. I think I will. I was a taco for Halloween. Talk about not having qualms about anything. I wore a taco suit that had lettuce going out that way. My head came out of the shell. What should be, though? I’m not familiar with all the characters.
HW: Wonder Woman?
EM: No, but that’s too sexy. I want to be something different. Think taco, but like a superhero. Super Taco! Nice.
