Eiza González stars on InStyle’s first-ever InStyle Now cover, a brand new iteration of InStyle that celebrates the people, projects, and topics that embody the moment.
With a starring role in the sprawling Netflix sci-fi series, ‘3 Body Problem,’ Eiza is about to show the world she’s more than just a pretty face.
In her InStyle interview, she opens up about the one-dimensional treatment of Latinas in the entertainment industry and the “identify crisis” she had after being typecast in Hollywood. Plus, she reveals why she’s taking a break from dating after being linked to high-profile men like Liam Hemsworth, Timothée Chalamet, and Jason Momoa.
Notable Quotes:
On taking a break from dating:
“I’ve sort of given up,” she says. “I’m not looking anymore.” “I am telling you: When I’m in love, I fall in love so deep and it takes me so much to get over,” she says. “And the older I get, it’s harder for me because I don’t play around. I go in and I give it all. I am not going to half-ass anything.”
On dating within the industry:
An actor in the prime of his career is “never going to take a back step for me,” she says. “I’m going to have to follow them, and they’re sort of dictating the rhythm.” This gendered disparity is compounded by the wage gap: “You have kids…and this actor is getting paid $20 million, and you get $2 million. He’s going to be like, ‘Well, you can go do that movie.’”
On her experience with therapy and why she won’t date anyone that hasn’t gone to therapy:
“Everyone needs therapy,” she says. “Therapy is the most normal [thing]! The concept of this prefixed negative idea about therapy is nuts to me. I think therapy is just the healthiest thing anyone could do.”
Eiza has been in therapy since she was young, a process she initially resisted. “I didn’t want to talk about my feelings, because I was in shock and I was traumatized, and I couldn’t bear the fact that my father had died.” Within a few years, she quit. Through her acting studies, though, she discovered that “the introspective work is never-ending” and she’d need to “face the monster” to become the performer she wanted to be. She started therapy again in her early twenties and never stopped.
“But I definitely have a list of non-negotiables.” She leans close to the screen. “If you’ve not gone to therapy,” she says, “I’m not dating you.”
On the bombshell treatment of Latin women in Hollywood:
“I just think it’s an overly sexualized idea of a Latin woman,” she says. “It’s so disappointing and it’s so pathetic.” Getting out of the bombshell box, she adds, “has been single-handedly the biggest challenge of my career.” Though she is loath to point this out, “None of my white friends who were in the industry were getting that. It was just me.”
“I remember being [told for] so many projects, ‘She’s too pretty for the role. She’s too hot for the role,’” says Eiza. “Then I’d just be like, What is Margot Robbie? She’s the hottest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life!”
On being treated as a rookie actor when she started working in the U.S. and feeling like her earlier career was dismissed:
“That was shocking because—and I don’t mean it in a way [of] no one knew who I was. No, no, no. When I started working in America,” Eiza recalls, “it was like, ‘So, how is it to be a beginning actress?’ And it was just embarrassing because…I was like, What am I going to say? ‘By the way, I’m successful in another country.’ ”
“But it was so discerning because it was dismissive of my entire career. It was dismissive of who I was. It was dismissive of my culture. It was dismissive of my experience, my work, my work ethic,” says Eiza. “Because you are uneducated and uninformed about other countries, that’s on you and that’s fine, but you cannot dismiss people’s careers.”
Read the full interview here.
The new InStyle Now cover story is available here.
Photo credit: David Roemer/InStyle
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