Ryan Reynolds

Actor

• Born: October 23, 1976
• Place of Birth: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Contribution: Ryan Reynolds is a Canadian actor best known for his roles in comedy films such as Van Wilder (2002) and The Proposal (2009), and for producing and starring in the Marvel Comics film adaptations Deadpool (2016), Deadpool 2 (2018), and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).

Background

Ryan Rodney Reynolds was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on October 23, 1976. His father, Jim, was a former member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a food wholesaler, and his mother, Tammy, worked in retail. Reynolds was the youngest of four sons. He began acting as a teenager and attended Kitsilano Secondary School before briefly attending Kwantlen College.

Career

Reynolds’s first acting role was in the teen soap opera Fifteen (alternatively titled Hillside in Canada), which earned him a nomination for a Young Artist Award in 1993. During this period Reynolds briefly lived in Florida, where the third and fourth seasons of the series were shot. He later returned to Vancouver and continued to act while taking classes in improvisational comedy. When Reynolds became dissatisfied with the roles he was playing, he quit acting briefly to tend bar and work in a Safeway supermarket. However, one of his friends urged him to move to Los Angeles and pursue his dream.

Reynolds received wide recognition after earning a leading role in the television sitcom Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, which premiered in 1998. In the show, Reynolds plays Michael “Berg” Bergen, a medical student living with a male and a female roommate. After two seasons, ABC opted to revamp the show, which continued to air through 2001 under the name Two Guys and a Girl. The role proved to be a gateway for Reynolds, and he soon began to receive film offers.

His first breakout film role was in the comedy Van Wilder (2002), in which he plays a college playboy who has his tuition cut off and must use his skills as a party liaison to finish his degree. While the film was shot for only $6 million, the film’s backers liked the product so much that they put in $21 million for promotional expenses.

After Van Wilder, Reynolds continued to appear in comedy films, including 2005’s Waiting . . . and Just Friends, but he also appeared in the thriller Foolproof (2003), the comedy-horror-action film Blade: Trinity (2004), and the classic horror remake The Amityville Horror (2005). Proving that he could successfully shift between genres, he played three different characters in The Nines in 2007, and the following year he starred in the romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe.

In 2009, Reynolds costarred in the hit romantic comedy The Proposal, in which he plays an assistant who must pretend to be engaged to his Canadian boss, played by Sandra Bullock, so that she can remain in the United States. The film earned mixed reviews from critics but grossed over $300 million internationally, becoming the highest-grossing comedy of the year and one of the biggest successes of Reynolds’s career. With this role Reynolds was poised to become a bankable leading man in the industry.

Reynolds followed The Proposal with a role in the low-budget thriller Buried (2010), which proved to be one of his most demanding roles. Reynolds spent much of the seventeen-day shoot inside a coffin, playing a man being held for ransom. The harrowing role took an emotional toll on Reynolds, whose performance was applauded by critics. At the end of 2010 Reynolds was named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.

In 2011, Reynolds appeared in two high-profile films that ultimately proved unsuccessful. He played the title superhero in Green Lantern and costarred in the comedy The Change-Up, both of which were poorly reviewed and underperformed at the box office. After several other films and a few voice roles, Reynolds starred in the action thriller Safe House (2012) opposite Academy Award–winning actor Denzel Washington.

In 2013, Reynolds voiced the main character in Turbo, an animated family film about a snail who loves to race. That summer Reynolds costarred with actor Jeff Bridges in the supernatural action film R.I.P.D., based on the Rest in Peace Department comic books. The adaption premiered on July 19, 2013, to poor reviews.

In 2016, Reynolds finally saw a long-term pet project come to fruition: Deadpool, a Marvel Comics film adaptation starring the titular character, a profane and irreverent mercenary who appears as a frequent antagonist and occasional ally in Marvel's various X-Men comic book series. Reynolds had signed on to play the character back in 2004, when Marvel and New Line Cinema began developing the film idea with Blade: Trinity screenwriter David Goyer. Though Reynolds was not familiar with the comics before then, he immediately felt a strong kinship with the character. When the initial project fell through, he went on to play Deadpool as a side character in the 2009 film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but the mishandling of the character in that film cast doubt on whether a Deadpool movie could ever be made. Reynolds persisted, however, and the film premiered in February 2016 to both critical praise and record-breaking box-office success. It grossed nearly $363.1 million domestically and $420 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $783.1 million, making it the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time, as well as the highest grossing in the X-Men franchise to date. In 2016 Entertainment Weekly named Reynolds its Entertainer of the Year, due in large part to his performance in Deadpool and the film's critical and box-office success.

Reynolds appeared in the science fiction–thriller Life and the action film The Hitman's Bodyguard in 2017, before reprising his role as Deadpool in the 2018 sequel Deadpool 2. In 2019, he starred as the voice of Pikachu in the comedy Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, a live-action film adaptation of the video game of the same name. That same year also saw him as part of an ensemble in Michael Bay's Netflix action film 6 Underground. Though the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that began in early 2020 interrupted entertainment production schedules, Reynolds's films The Croods: A New Age, an animated feature in which he joined a star-studded cast as the voice of Guy, and The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard, a sequel to its 2017 predecessor, were released in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

Also in 2021, Reynolds starred in the Shawn Levy–directed action comedy Free Guy and the Netflix original action film Red Notice, alongside Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot. In 2022, he again worked with Levy, starring in the Netflix original science fiction film The Adam Project.

In August 2024, Reynolds and his wife, Blake Lively, both starred in films that led the box office on the same weekend. Reynolds starred in the hit Deadpool & Wolverine, and Lively starred in It Ends with Us. They were the first married couple to share this honor since Bruce Willis and Demi Moore in 1990.

Impact

While primarily known for his work in comedy, Reynolds has also been praised for his versatility and the liveliness and personality he brings to his roles. Despite a series of disappointments after the success of The Proposal, Reynolds remains an in-demand star and has achieved recognition for his work in portraying the Marvel character Deadpool on screen. In 2016, he was awarded with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Reynolds is also a successful businessperson. According to Forbes in 2023, the companies he owned or has sold were worth more than $14 billion. These investments included Alpine F1 Racing Team, Wrexham Football Club, Aviation Gin, Mint Mobile, and Maximum Effort Agency. Reynolds has said he is not a businessperson but has launched successful business campaigns on social media by telling good stories that make people laugh.

Personal Life

Reynolds became engaged to singer Alanis Morrissette in 2004, but the pair broke up in 2006. He married actor Scarlett Johansson in a quiet ceremony in 2008; the couple separated two years later and were divorced in 2011. On September 9, 2012, Reynolds married Green Lantern costar Blake Lively in a private ceremony; they went on to have three children together.

Bibliography

Buchanan, Kyle. “Why Can’t Ryan Reynolds Become the Big Star that Hollywood Wants Him To Be?” Vulture, New York Media, 24 July 2013, www.vulture.com/2013/07/why-cant-ryan-reynolds-become-a-big-movie-star.html. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.

Fatemi, Falon. "Build the Next Generation of Media Empires: How Ryan Reynolds Did It." Forbes, 1 Oct. 2023, www.forbes.com/sites/falonfatemi/2023/09/29/while-sags-on-strike-how-to-be-the-next-ryan-reynolds/. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.

Johnson, Brian D. “Red Hot Ryan.” Maclean’s, 19 Sept. 2011, pp. 66–68. Academic Search Complete, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=66360689&site=ehost-live. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

Pastorek, Whitney. “Ryan Reynolds: Must Leading Man.” Entertainment Weekly, 26 June 2009, pp. 38–40. Academic Search Complete, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=42528180&site=ehost-live. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

Puig, Claudia. “Ryan Reynolds Digs Deep for Brutal Buried Role.” USA Today, 23 Sept. 2010, Life sec., p. 13B. Academic Search Complete, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=J0E371124088510&site=ehost-live. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

Reynolds, Ryan. “Ryan Reynolds on Putting Blood, Sweat and 10 Years of His Life into Deadpool.” Interview by Josh Rottenberg. Los Angeles Times, 12 Feb. 2016, www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-ryan-reynolds-deadpool-20160209-story.html. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.

Reynolds, Ryan. “Why I’m Obsessed with Ryan Reynolds.” Entertainment Weekly, 24 June 2011, pp. 36–41. Academic Search Complete, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=61844714&site=ehost-live. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

"Ryan Reynolds: The Faces Interview." Faces Magazine, 1 July 2020, facesmag.ca/ryan-reynolds-the-faces-interview/. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.

Stack, Tim. “Ryan Reynolds: EW Entertainer of the Year.” Entertainment Weekly, 14 Dec. 2016, ew.com/article/2016/12/14/ryan-reynolds-ew-entertainer-year/. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.