Eiza González Is Entering Her Strongest Phase Yet

The global star opens up about body dysmorphia, health challenges, and the ongoing journey to make sense of it all.

It’s sunny on the rooftop of Soho House Holloway, an unseasonably warm 76 degrees on a March afternoon in L.A. Her curls shining in the rays, actor Eiza González sips iced coffee, wearing athleisure and little, if any, makeup. She waves and smiles, and the scene feels effortlessly light—almost a cliché, to be frank; so perfect that it’s hard to imagine having a genuine conversation. But as she settles into our back and forth, the brightness quickly gives way to something sharper—something more real.

“I’ve always said my life is far from perfect,” she tells me. “It’s been incredibly messy, and morally sometimes it doesn’t fully align. Who I want to be and what I am sometimes are not in the same place—and that’s okay because that is life.”

This is the Eiza rarely seen in Hollywood: vibrant and sunlit on the surface, yet deeply shaped by grief, health battles, and the slow work of feeling at home in herself. Her days are incredibly full, but so are the years behind her, the ones that taught her about the life she’s trying to build.

And that life has been extremely busy of late. In addition to wrapping up nine months in Budapest filming for seasons 2 and 3 of Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, the 36-year-old also has three movie projects hitting this year. Already out is Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, an action comedy in which she plays Alice, a woman tangled up in an organized-crime-meets-science-fiction plot. Next up is the thriller In the Grey (out May 15), her third release with director Guy Ritchie at the helm and perhaps one of her most ambitious films to date. Then there’s I Love Boosters (out May 22), an all-star film by Boots Riley that, like his directorial debut, transports viewers to a completely different world while ruminating on the implications of our actions in this one.

“I like bold characters. I love women with agency who are chaotic and in a way multifaceted, and I think those projects couldn’t be more different,” she says. Eiza’s process with I Love Boosters in particular must have felt like playtime—creating a character within the context of that film. “I had a huge question mark on how to play her, and Boots was just like, ‘Go for it.’ And so we kind of created this deadpan emo character. You pray that it lands, because it’s a real big swing, and she’s hilarious. I find her really funny.”

As Eiza speaks, I’m taken by how easily her mind shuffles through things—she’s quick-witted and thoughtful, and she speaks easily on everything from filming to grief to body image. There’s no pretense, and while she’s bubbly, she’s also grounded. She’s prepared, she’s ready, yet she’s also fluid and funny—an actor fully in command of herself and her story. But it’s taken time, effort, and patience to get to this vibrant, calm, and confident state.

Born in Mexico City, Eiza started acting at a young age, landing a leading role in a telenovela as a teen and later breaking out in another starring role in the Argentinean-Mexican Nickelodeon sitcom Sueña Conmigo. A singer, she also released two albums, Contracorriente and Te Acordarás de Mí, before moving to L.A. in 2013 to further her acting career.

“I was so terrified when I broke into the industry [with 2017’s Baby Driver] because I was very self-conscious about English not being my first language,” she says. “I felt like I was just never going to have the naturality that it took. Like when you’re speaking your language, you react in your language, and having to sort of fake that because you’re not in your natural language, people sometimes take for granted. Preparation and discipline are what really make the difference.”

Eiza’s résumé has steadily expanded across film and TV. She’s appeared in blockbuster hits like Godzilla vs. Kong and high-octane thrillers like Ambulance, in addition to the cult-favorite show From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series.

Despite the success, Eiza has been candid about her struggles with confidence, body image, and self-consciousness after growing up in the public eye. When she was 12, her father died in a motorcycle accident. As she navigated that grief, she turned to compulsive eating—an experience that coincided with the pressure of being a woman in an external-facing industry in the late ’90s and early 2000s, and which contributed to a long battle with body dysmorphia.

“It’s so funny because when I was young, I always thought, Oh my God, I’m so mature for my age. And everyone would say, ‘You’re so mature for your age. You’re incredibly mature for your age.’ And you start kind of believing that story,” she says.

At the time, she thought she had everything under control, but with distance, she sees it differently. “Now with age and maturity, in hindsight, I’m like, I was really unwell,” she says. “I never went down a rabbit hole of alcoholism or [other addictions]—mine was just this incredibly complex journey with my own body.”

In recent years, she’s tried to better understand how grief and trauma shaped the dysfunctional relationship with her body. She points to books like The Body Keeps the Score that help people understand how trauma can manifest physically, often in ways they don’t immediately recognize. “I ate my feelings for so long, my body became this armor,” she says.

That experience unfolded during an era of brutal tabloid culture. Eiza remembers standing in checkout lines and seeing magazines that zoomed in on celebrities’ cellulite. “It was horrifying,” she says. “It was with the intent to make fun of them, to minimize them, to make them feel like they’re not good enough—or to humanize them but in a way that is vile, not in a compassionate or empathetic way but in a vicious way.”

Today, she feels relieved to see a shift in how women embrace their bodies—and their cellulite. “It’s so beautiful now when I see women flaunting their bodies the way they are. I’ve had cellulite since I was really young. I’m prone to it, with genetics, and I remember being, like, terrified of showing it, and now I’m just like, Who the fuck cares?”

Her perspective on trauma has evolved as well. She says that it “does ground you in a way, but you also realize that trauma is trauma, and it will destabilize you, and you can only try your utter best in those moments. It’s okay. It’s messy.”

That self-awareness now extends to her health, too, as Eiza reveals to Women’s Health that she’s living with endometriosis, adenomyosis, and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Conditions that took years to properly identify, she says.

“[It’s] the usual story you hear over and over again with women,” she says. “It’s the ‘Oh, this is normal. This is part of your cycle. This is part of your cramps. Oh, this pain is normal. Oh, this level of bleeding is normal. Oh, these mood swings are normal. This weight gain is normal.’ And it’s just decades of that.”

Ultimately she was forced to take a closer look. “It just got to this place where eventually your body cracks, and sadly, it was kind of the situation for me,” she says, pointing also to a family history that made her really want to get to the bottom of her symptoms and her pain. “Once I turned 30, I became really consistent. I started doing yearly checkups, like, religiously, with MRIs to keep track of what’s going on with my body.”

It was through one of these MRIs that she got her first diagnosis, at the age of 30: severe adenomyosis, a condition in which the tissue that normally lines the uterus grows into the organ’s muscular wall, often causing heavy bleeding, painful periods, and pelvic pain, and in Eiza’s case leaving her with an enlarged uterus, measuring roughly five inches—noticeably bigger than the typical two-to three-and-a-half-inch size.

These scans, plus the decision to freeze her eggs, led to her being diagnosed with endometriosis and PCOS—a hormonal disorder that can cause irregular periods, enlarged ovaries, and symptoms like weight gain, acne, and fertility challenges.

When Eiza began discussing her health with friends and family, she was surprised to learn how unfamiliar her conditions were to so many women around her. “The more I spoke to others about these things, women were like, ‘I’ve never heard this before,’ ” she says. “And that was mind-boggling. You look at the numbers out there, women with endo or adenomyosis or PCOS, and most of my girlfriends had no idea what [they] were.”

For Eiza, the experience underscored what she sees as a deeper issue in women’s health care. “It made me understand how broken the system is,” she says. “The gaslighting of years of ‘You do have it,’ and then ‘You don’t have it,’ from doctors.” She says getting diagnosed, which she points out isn’t an easy feat, was extremely affirming. “Just getting a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel made a difference. Now I can take action and be kinder to my body, where I used to be like, ‘Why am I not recovering faster?’ Or ‘Why am I getting these period pains?’ ” (That action she mentions involved diet and exercise, alongside help by doctors and holistic treatments.)

Amid this uncertainty about her health, Eiza made the decision to freeze her eggs to give herself a sense of control. “When I started realizing everything that was going on with my body, I just said, ‘You know what? I don’t know where this road is going to end, but I don’t want to miss this window and that opportunity.’ And so I found this amazing doctor, and she made me feel so safe.”

During the egg-freezing process, Eiza keyed into the importance of her diet. Having dabbled in vegan, vegetarian, and keto diets in the past, she now just tries to eat to fuel her body and ease inflammation with her conditions—which means incorporating anti-inflammatory foods, fatty fish for antioxidants, leafy greens, and whole grains.

Moving her body is also important. Eiza does a mix of pilates, heavy weight training, and boxing—the latter of which she credits with helping her mental health for more than a decade. “Feeling good in my body makes my mind stable, and it’s huge for me,” she says.

At the moment, though, her workout routine is more intense than usual, as she’s training for an undisclosed project—working to bulk up, with two weight-training sessions a day. Her partners in this endeavor are personal trainers Grant Roberts, who helped transform Hilary Swank for Million Dollar Baby, and Julian Bah. She works with movement specialist and chiropractor Tarek Adra, as well as physical therapist Fabrice Gautier. She’s also working with nutritionist Chris Talley to power through the workouts and recovery. “I have three, four people working with me across the board…and it’s just been amazing because I’m learning so much through it all,” she says.

Eiza also applies an “it takes a village” approach to her beauty routine, working with facialist Vanessa Hernandez and doing things like PRF (platelet-rich fibrin) treatments and using biostimulators, as well as seeing a lymphatic-drainage specialist. She loves dabbling in new wellness modalities, like sensory deprivation tanks and hyperbaric chambers—she’ll try most things once. She relies on her Oura ring to understand her sleep, though she confesses she wants to become better at getting consistent sleep. Having a tennis pro for a partner, however, helps: The athlete’s routine offers a template for her own life.

In fact, Eiza credits her boyfriend, Grigor Dimitrov (they were set up by Eva Longoria), for being a huge part of her own evolution in becoming kinder to her body and also learning what true support looks like. He’s someone who shows up for her through doctor’s appointments, does his own research to understand her diagnoses, and helps her stay disciplined. “He’s just so in tune with himself,” she says. “Seeing that on a daily basis was very informative, and I’ve never been in such an amazing, healthy, all-around relationship, with someone that I admire and look up to.”

Eiza’s life experiences—losing a father so young, dealing with body image issues and years of unexplained pain, and navigating interpersonal relationships in the public eye—have ultimately helped her be more understanding toward herself and more understanding of what so many other women go through. “You’re not alone in this [health] process, and we’re all finding our ways,” she says.

Through that empathy, she’s learned to approach her own journey with patience and perspective, and it has brought clarity. “Now I feel like I’m coming to this place where I’m on the right path,” she says—a path that embraces both the realities of her body and the fullness of her life, one that is messy, imperfect, but deeply human, and entirely hers.

Photographed by Adam Franzino
Executive Visual Director Fabienne Le Roux
Creative Director Jamie Prokell
Styling By Ryan Young
Hair Cherilyn Farris at Highlight Artists
Makeup Diane Buzzetta at Highlight Artists
Body Glow Alexandra DiMarchi
Manicure Emi Kudo using La Mer
Prop Styling Cate Geiger
Production Crawford Productions
Executive Producer Dorenna Newton
DP Ryan Murphy
Editor Josh Archer
Camera Joey Kramer
Sound Matthew Leeb
Producer Janie Booth

Via: Women’s Health