Eiza González Says She ‘Didn’t Cry at All’ for 5 Years After Her Dad’s Death at Age 12: ‘Complete and Utter Denial’

• Eiza González said she struggled to cry for five years after her father died in a motorcycle accident shortly after her 12th birthday
• “I was just in complete and utter denial,” the actress said of dealing with grief
• The Fountain of Youth star explained that she “just completely removed myself from my father, like, I just couldn’t”

Eiza González is sharing the emotional devastation she felt in the years after her father’s death.

The Ambulance actress, 35, appeared on the March 26 episode of Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed podcast to promote her new movie Ash.

Keeping with the podcast’s theme — Badgley, 38, quizzes guests on their experiences in middle school, per the show’s website — González said she struggled with processing her emotions after her dad died in a motorcycle accident “exactly 10 days” after her 12th birthday.

“He cared about people so much. And I just couldn’t connect, the unfairness of him dying. I just was like, [of] all the f—ing s—ty people in the world, him?” González said, after noting that she struggled with her family’s devout Christian faith after his death.

“It made me not believe in anything bigger. … I lost faith completely. And I had a real hard realization of my dynamic with my father. I wasn’t able to cry for four years. Four or five years — I didn’t cry at all. I was just in complete and utter denial. And, simultaneously, I started my career, and I needed to cry a lot for work.”

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González began acting as a child in the 2007 Mexican telenovela Lola, érase una vez when she was around 16. She starred in a number of Mexican series before moving to the U.S. and acting for English-language movies and series like 2014’s Almost Thirty and 2017’s Baby Driver. More recently, she starred in Netflix’s 3 Body Problem and in the 2022 movie Ambulance. 

“Something died in me and and I just completely removed myself from my father. Like, I just couldn’t,” González added of how she approached her grief in the aftermath of her father’s death. “It was so unbearable that I just sort of walked away completely.”

González did acknowledge that her father’s death opened up new avenues for her to “sort of create an identity of my own” and helped her develop a better relationship with her mother, whom she described as “the breadwinner in the house.”

“My mom in some very profound way says that life has God, has a a reason for that, and there was a reason why those 12 years of my life were completely devoted to him because I was never gonna have him again,” she said. “And then she was gonna have me for the rest of life. She really sees it in a way, but— it was really challenging. Then I had my own personal sort of reconnection with him, and it really took me years.”

González’s new movie Ash is in theaters now.