Earrings: Mounser
Top: Protagonist
Katrina Symonds
Creative Direction:
HILLARY COMSTOCK
EDITORIAL PRODUCTION:
DANI + EMMA
STYLIng:
CHRISTIAN MARC
HAIR:
sylve colless
PHOTOGRAPHy:
STEPHANIE STONE
nails:
NATASHA SEVERINO
MAKEUP:
By Amanda Montell
González has a powerful presence, physically and otherwise. Her natural stance is with her hands on her hips, like a superhero, and when she speaks, it’s with animated hand gestures and a full voice. As confident as she may seem, however, González isn’t immune to the stresses that come with a career in entertainment. It’s taken a lot of hustle to get her to this point—to this role in a big American blockbuster. “In the film industry, your life gets so emotionally unbalanced. You’re moving around all the time. You don’t get to see your loved ones. Relationships tend to go to hell,” she says. “Do you know how many auditions I go on? Sometimes five a week.”
González restarted her career from scratch when she moved to the U.S. half a decade ago. In that time, she’s had to learn not to stew in self-criticism or fall in love with a role before it’s officially hers. “I was attached to Star Wars for a while, and then that didn’t work out,” she tells me, adding that losses like that happen all the time in Hollywood and that to succeed, you can’t let them get you down. “There are two pieces of advice I’ve come to live by: Don’t take yourself too seriously, and you can’t win them all.”
Mysterious, machine gun–slinging Darling is the exact sort of role González always envisioned for herself. “I’ve always been drawn to characters who empower and inspire other women because I never had the chance to do that when I was younger.” González tells me she believes that both on and off screen, women will always be the minority that has to fight the hardest to earn respect from those in charge. But she’s hopeful for the future of women in film. “I felt that when I was watching Wonder Woman—there were chills down my spine,” she says of this summer’s female-led megahit. González hopes that women and young girls will see her in Baby Driver and think, Wow, now that is rad.
To González, it makes sense why so many L.A. dreamers turn to things like meditation and crystals—in a town full of uncertainty and rejection, it’s a way for people to care for themselves emotionally. González says she’s trying to get better at that. “I don’t pamper myself,” she tells me. (Manicures and leisurely brunches are seldom on the actress’s weekend to-do list.) “I’m always in a rush. And I’m a perfectionist, so I’m brutal with myself.” When asked what the most stressful part of her life is, González says, “[It’s] that I’m so driven. It’s stressful to be an ambitious woman.”
I understand what González means. I relate to the notion that having lofty dreams for your life can feel like a burden, especially in a culture that wants women to be humble and submissive. But so far, González’s ambition is paying off. In Baby Driver, she plays Darling, the only woman in a ring of badass bank robbers. She was cast in the role the good old-fashioned way—by auditioning several times and meeting with the writer and director Edgar Wright, whom González calls “brilliant.” She has equal reverence for her famous co-stars. “Kevin and Ansel, Jamie, Jon, and Lily: They’re all extremely talented but also so down-to-earth,” she dishes. “I see Lily as sunlight. She’s such a powerful force. And the guys were all so awesome and funny.” Make no mistake, though—González wasn’t intimidated by them. “Yes, I was starstruck, but I also knew that I earned my place in that movie,” she says with conviction.
There are beauty standards everywhere, but González says that growing up in Mexico, she felt pressure to live up to one specific image: “Lighter skin tone, lighter eyes, blond hair.” Interestingly, once she moved to the U.S., she felt like she was suddenly perceived as this exotic beauty—“I get it: We always like whatever there isn’t much of,” she concludes. González is optimistic that our definition of beauty is expanding, thanks in part to contemporary role models like Winnie Harlow, the first supermodel with vitiligo, and body-positive cover girl Ashley Graham. A decade ago, when González was starting her career, those narrow expectations were hard to handle—but her insecurities are behind her now, she tells me with poise.
As González’s career continues to skyrocket, that poise will come in handy. (As will her daily workouts—“They really help keep me clear-headed,” she says.)
The actress is looking at a busy next couple of years. In 2018, we can expect two huge projects from her: Alita: Battle Angel, a sci-fi movie directed by the legendary Robert Zemeckis, as well as a film by Avatar’s James Cameron. Supporting women filmmakers is also a priority for González, and she has at least one female-directed project in the works. She has ambitions to direct herself as well. “That’s one of the most immediate things I want to do,” she says.
But González reminds herself to take things one step at a time—to start with a few small garnets before springing for the $200 gem. “Now is when I get to prove myself, and I’m so excited that I get to do that twice,” she says. “I had to do it in my country, and now I have to do it here.”
To prepare for her action-packed role, González worked with a fitness trainer seven days a week—sometimes twice in one day. “I had to carry and shoot two machine guns. People don’t realize how heavy they are,” she says, lifting an imaginary AK-47 to her shoulder. “I couldn’t look like a spaghetti noodle. I had to make it believable.”
Even when González isn’t training for a movie, though, she’s at the gym every day. (“I’m obsessed,” she admits.) Her rigorous workout routine includes a combination of weight lifting, Pilates, TRX, yoga, and a unique exercise from Sandbox Fitness, a boutique gym near González’s home in Sherman Oaks, California. When González first described it to me, I thought she was joking: It involves executing a series of intense strength-training moves while balancing on a wobbling surfboard in the middle of a sandy indoor beach. Outlandish as it sounds, the actress swears it’s the best core workout you can find. “You get so ripped,” she says. “I do it every morning. You have to try it.”
González wasn’t always such a fitness lover. Like most people, she didn’t have much of a wellness regimen growing up—the difference was that she was on a hit television show, and judgments from the pubic took a toll on her self-esteem. “I was chubby for a lot of my teen years, and people were really harsh on me,” González recalls. “They would say, ‘Oh, she’s fat.’ I became self-conscious. That’s when I learned you can’t just eat tacos every day.” González responded to the criticism by losing a lot of weight, which only earned her more scrutiny.
Living up to the stereotype, crystal shopping is a fairly normal way for two acquaintances to spend an afternoon in L.A. You can actually learn quite a lot about someone from their taste in spiritual tchotchkes—and how willing they are to buy into the idea that wearing an amethyst around your neck balances your crown chakra and that placing a jade ellipsoid in your vagina makes you a better lover. (González was especially curious about the sex-themed crystals. “One of my friends has a crystal dildo” was one of the first sentences out of her mouth. “Do you sell any of those here?”)
After checking out at House of Intuition, González and I meander to a coffee bar down the block, where she confesses that though her instincts tell her you can’t actually fix your life with rose quartz, she’s recently started exploring more spiritual methods of healing. “I hate bullshit,” she contends, as a waiter in suspenders (an aspiring actor himself, no doubt) serves us iced almond milk lattés. “To me, everything has to have a logical explanation. But you also have to have balance as a human being, you know?”
Five years after moving to Los Angeles to take on the American movie scene, González’s stateside fame is finally on the cusp of exploding. It’s mostly thanks to her role in Baby Driver, a new action film about a group of criminals and their getaway driver starring Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jamie Foxx, and Jon Hamm. The film hits theaters nationwide June 28 and is already earning four-star reviews from critics. “I’d never lived in a country where no one knew who I was,” González says of her life before Hollywood. “It’s been refreshing to have five years of being a normal girl, getting to walk around the city, do reckless things.”
Overspending on crystals, for example. González plucks one more stone from a bowl—a sparkly red bauble—and adds it to her collection. “Okay,” she says. “I think I’m ready now.”
"
I am so excited that i got
to prove myself twice.…
I had to do it in my country,
and now i have to do it here.
Eiza González
"
Trench: Stylist Own
Trousers: Vintage Chloe
Top: Helmut Lang
Earrings: Azlee
Rings: Azlee
Boots: Kurt Geiger
Top: Jonathan Simkhai
Earrings: Gabriela Artigas
Dress: Carven
Trousers: Prabal Gurung
Top: A.L.C.
If we were in González’s home country of Mexico, there would surely be a swarm of paparazzi out front, jonesing for a snap of the pouty star in her white jeans, bomber jacket, and long chestnut hair. González is the T.V. darling of Mexico. Having starred in a series of wildly popular telenovelas from the age of 15 to 22, she can’t walk down a street in Mexico City without a surge of screaming fans in her wake. “The Mexican soap operas really make people feel like they know you,” she says. “They come up to me like we’re best friends. It’s a cultural thing.”
González and I have spent the past hour wandering through House of Intuition, West Hollywood’s one-stop shop for all things witchy and metaphysical. The 27-year-old actress fingers the dozen pocket-size crystals she’s already picked out—an assemblage of shimmering quartzes and garnets—along with an abalone shell and 10 incense sticks (one of which she selected purely for the name of the scent: Latin Lover).
If we weren’t on a schedule, Eiza González would have touched every single crystal in the store. “Oh my god, this one is dope,” she gasps, lifting a three-pound metallic gem the color of a raspberry from a display shelf. She flips the thing over, takes one look at the price sticker, and laughs— “$200. Damn, girl.”
The most stressful
part of my
life is that I'm
so driven.
Eiza González
Meet Eiza Gonzalez,
Hollywood's Newest Badass Feminist Actress
Prepared for Anything
EM-
POWER
-ED
N
E
V
I
R
D
BAD-
ASS
"
I AM
EXCITED
TO PROVE
MYSELF
