Ryan Reynolds: The Man Of Many Names

Ryan Reynolds is so many things, holds many a name and wears many a hat. Hollywood’s best, brightest star, for starters. He owns an acting hat, a producer hat, he’s a writer, a father, a husband, a prankster, a charmer, a smooth-talker, a businessman, entrepreneur, a dreamer. Call Ryan Reynolds a joker, a silly-billy, an EverReady battery, a phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes, or the go-to guy.

So many names could be given to this acting icon, but by the time you’ve thought up the precise word for how you would describe this Hollywood superstar, he’s probably already won an award for his latest role, released Deadpool 3, 4 and 5, and put to bed one of his three daughters; All in the space of mere minutes.

“I don’t expect success—I prepare for it.“
— Ryan Reynolds

Ryan isn’t your ‘typical American actor’. Oh no, he’s so much more than that. He knows what he’s doing and you know he’s going to do a good job with a cheeky grin and inappropriate joke or comment so he can stick in your memory. He’s got a keen-business mind too and is wildly likeable with it. Whether he’s walking the red carpet to his latest film premiere with his wife, Blake Lively by his side, or holding a meeting for his creative input to Aviation Gin, Reynolds’ brilliance has come from years and years of hard work and determination.

Born in 1976 to a retailer and retired police officer, childhood was reportedly tough for little Ryan. Growing up in a strict Irish Catholic family in the neighbourhood of Kitsilano, Vancouver, Canada, and being one of four siblings, he often felt like the punching bag or the easy-target of jabs and practical jokes. His father had quite a raging temper too. “He could snatch the life right out of you with a simple look,” Reynolds wrote on his life for Time magazine in 2014. “Shifting his weight ever so slightly from one foot to another could transform an otherwise delightful sixth birthday party into what felt like an Irish funeral…” His mother, Tammy, on the other hand, caringly protected him from his fathers outbursts. She was who the Hollywood star really looked up to in these precious childhood years. It’s wholesome to note that they’re still as close as they were back then, frequenting events with her successful son.

At age 12, as a way to escape his home life, Reynolds took his first dip in the acting pool and auditioned for the role of Billy Simpson on Nickelodeon’s Canadian teen-drama series, Hillside. He wanted to use Billy as a catalyst for escape. To his own surprise, he was cast almost straight away. “It was weird,” Reynolds confessed to Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan on Kelly & Ryan in 2016, “I was paid $150 an episode, as well as my paper route. I’d do the TV show and then go home and deliver my papers. I thought I was a kajillionnaire!”

Billy Simpson—the annoying little brother, burgeoning drummer and wannabe trickster—fast became an audience favourite. Even from this first role, Reynolds was getting die-hard fans. One of the four actors to last the entire show, and definitely its most celebrated alum, Reynolds implemented that balance of brilliance and awkward teenage angst.

Following this wild TV screen debut, Reynolds went on to star as a lead role in the 1994 adventure-fantasy, The Odyssey, where he played the power-hungry, Marco. Penned as “the Canadian Lord of the Flies” by Ontario’s CBC (also the show’s producer). It was an instant hit and (to be expected) Reynolds was the shining star of it. On a side-note, it must be acknowledged that he was still at school, and still doing that paper route. He knew what hard work looked and felt like and he was pushing through to get to his goals.

“I have a discipline that has served me very well in my career and in my personal life,” Reynolds told Access Online in 2010. “That’s gotten stronger as I’ve gotten older. I’ve always felt that if I don’t just have a natural knack for it, I will just out-discipline the competition if I have to—work harder than anybody else.”

It was after The Odyssey, Ryan became a bit disheartened with acting and pumped the breaks a little on his career. He even enrolled himself in criminology at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, but made sure to do some extra work on the side in such TV shows as The X-Files and Sabrina the Teenage Witch to keep the creative muscles flexing. University, on a side-note, really wasn’t for him. No joke, he only lasted three-quarters of an hour—he called it quits on his first day.

“I’m not being facetious…I spent 45 minutes in college. I turned around and said ‘I’m going to drive to LA and try to get into the Groundlings.’”

So that’s what he did. Reynolds reversed quickly out of the university car park, packed his things away in a gym bag, kissed his mum goodbye and headed to the City of Angels. He knew he was destined for bigger and better things. His first port-of-call was the sketch-comedy troupe on Melrose Avenue. As soon as he arrived, however, the young dreamer’s hopes were dashed. He didn’t realise that he had to put real effort into auditioning. He just thought he could show up, show off his goods and then be offered a place. He needed to take classes, research heavily and do his homework to get to that main stage. The only badges he had thus far on his sleeve were his successful roles on Hillside and The Odyssey. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t get into the prestigious improv troupe, so signed himself an agent and totally winged his next step. He was just 19—still two years away from being legally allowed to drink in the USA—so after this little jilt, it is no surprise that he was throwing his caution to the wind, making the sort of decisions men that age normally make.

“I was partying and just trying to make myself vanish in some way,” he explained to New York Times in 2018. He told the prestigious newspaper that he had turned to self-medication, but ultimately eased up on the partying after some of his friends unfortunately passed away due to overdoses. It was around this time Reynolds realised the drain of mental health and anxiety, a battle the A-list actor still fights today.

After a couple of years of finding himself on the LA circuit with his agent, he was cast as the lead role in a ‘plum gig’, Two Guys, A Girl and A Pizza Place, produced by ABC. He played Michael Eugene Leslie ‘Berg’ Bergen, the protagonist college-guy who is questioning his life goals after graduation. Maybe it was the weight of that five-barrel name, or the pressure of success he was putting on himself, but he really thrived in that role. He may have been overworking to prove something, or it was just god-given talent, he did an amazing job no matter what. Reynolds stayed in that role for five seasons, and became well-known in the industry. Around this time he had started going out with singer Alanis Morrissette too, who even wrote a whole album—Flavors of Entanglement—about him.

After leaving the sitcom, Reynolds was cast almost straight away as the titular character in the comedy National Lampoon’s Van Wilder. Don’t be perturbed, dear Reader, by its one-star-on-Rotten-Tomatoes status. It’s a hoot of a film. This was Reynolds’ debut big-screen appearance too. It tells of Vance ‘Van’ Wilder (played by Reynolds)—the confident, sardonic senior student—creating a trail of carnage as he paves his way through college by helping the undergraduates. Following in the lines of the gross-out teenage-rompers like American Pie, Van Wilder wasn’t Ryan’s best character by any stretch but it certainly got him back on the map. It made $38 million at the box office on a $5 million budget and it certainly showed the world Reynolds’ comedic timing, a trade-mark of his in the roles that were waiting for him around the next bend. It was after this movie break-out that the roles just started flooding in. And when I say flooded in, I definitely don’t use that term lightly.

Every film seemed to feature this Canadian superstar. From Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle to the 2005 remake of the 1979 classic horror film, The Amityville Horror, to The Proposal alongside Sandra Bullock, the actor was certainly exercising his creative muscles during the early-to-mid 2000’s. He was slowly rising the ranks, step-by-step and he wasn’t backing down or admitting defeat. That hard-work and determination showed him to be one of the greatest assets to Hollywood. He was the go-to guy for any movie producer. As much as I would love to cover each of his roles up to that point, his CV is just too chock-full. Just trust me when I say that it’s impressive.

It was around the time he was squeezing himself into the green The Green Lantern superhero suit in 2011 that his attention became focused on the path of a different kind. Yes, Reynolds did meet his now-wife-and-mother-to-his-three-children, Blake Lively on the set of The Green Lantern, but I’m not talking about that kind of journey. He was also given the Sexiest Man Alive honour in 2010 by People magazine, but it wasn’t that either. Deadpool was as spicy a prospect of any Hollywood relationship or sex-appeal. Ryan had started talking with Avi Arad, the CEO of Marvel Comics at the time, trying to build the world of the anti-hero and really trying hard to pitch it to Fox. He wanted the film made, the story to be told right, but no big-shark executives were biting.
“It was a real sort of emotional yo-yo,” he told the Los Angeles Times of the experience. “I’ve always likened it to the worst relationship I’ve ever been in: on-again, off-again, occasionally sleeping together, which just causes more pain. And then finally it ended in a really lovely wedding.”

As the fourth-wall-breaking, unapologetically vulgar character, Ryan used his brilliant acting talent and comedic timing to bring this character to life. The character of Deadpool seems to have no origin story either, which gave Reynolds a wider range to explore and push the limits. It was the meticulous detail that Reynolds went to to get the tone right that makes it impressive. Audiences went away from screenings in 2016 with smiles on their faces, thinking it was the funniest film ever. But there was also a large amount of pain and drama between the lines, having grounded Deadpool in his own personal Hell. Deadpool, and its sequel, Deadpool 2, became giant box office hits, grossing up to $782 million worldwide and netting critical acclaim and nods at different award ceremonies. Both of the films broke records too. The first Deadpool, for instance, came up the second largest film to be made by Fox, just shy from Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith.

“I’m so happy that it has become something of a cultural phenomenon,” he told Variety in 2016. “I’ll walk out of my apartment in New York City and I can’t believe it: I’ll see something like 300 Deadpools in any square block. It’s mind-blowing to me.”

As well as being an A-class actor, funnyman and one of the most likeable guys in the film industry, Ryan is also a very talented businessman. For starters he is heavily involved in the production side of many of the film he stars in. He has producer credits for films such as R.I.P.D., both Deadpool movies, Free Guy and X-Force. He really is the hardest worker when it comes to films.
In 2018, Ryan became the co-owner and de facto ambassador of Aviation Gin through Davos Brands overlooking the business and creative input. Aviation Gin was reportedly sold last year for a cool $610 million, to England-based spirit brand, Diageo, but Reynolds is still very much a part of its running nowadays. Who would want to give away the opportunity for Ryan Reynolds to be the face of a company, right? He uses another business of his, Maximum Effort, run alongside his marketing-exec buddy, George Dewey, to help promote both the Deadpool franchise and Aviation’s marketing campaigns.

“I’ve tried every gin on the planet and Aviation is, hands down, the best. Also, I don’t recommend trying every gin on the planet. Stick with this one…” I mean, what more can you want? Tasty American-style gin and dead-pan humour?

Even after the acquisition, the Deadpool star went on joking and sent out a mass email apologising for his absence and jokingly telling them “to go f**k themselves” after learning how much money he was making on the sale.

Whilst acting and overseeing Aviation Gin in 2019, Reynolds had purchased a majority stake of 20 to 25 percent in MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), Mint Mobiles. During the 2019 Super Bowl, Reynolds bought a $125,000 full-page ad space in The New York Times to advertise with the intention of making it easier for the prepaid consumer to purchase. It’s exciting and brilliant to think that the actor can wear so many hats at once. But Reynolds has a knack of creating storytelling in his marketing. “Marketing,” he said to The Wall Street Journal, “to a certain extent, is diet storytelling.” The sales of Mint Mobile rose astronomically with his god-like presence.

When looking at Ryan Reynolds—or Deadpool, if you will—you don’t see much of a sporty-sort of guy. You’d be wrong about that. Last year, with his friend and fellow actor, Rob McElhenney, put their business minds together and bought a Welsh football team. Yes, you read that right. Deadpool now owns Wrexham AFC which competes in the fifth tier of the English football league. In purchasing the team, Reynolds became fascinated with the beautiful Welsh language. In his recent Netflix film, Red Notice (where he stars alongside The Rock and Gal Gadot) he requested that Welsh subtitles be included too.

After wearing so many hats on acting and business projects, Reynolds took a chance to have some fun whilst filming Red Notice. His character, Nolan Booth, is the second most-wanted art thief and his character portrayal just emanates that cheeky, quick-witted style. It was launched on the streaming platform in early November. He’s also spent eight months in a song-and-dance musical film called Spirited, where the choreographed musical numbers required more shots than any action film he’s ever done. And yet, as the sun sets on yet another project, more ideas are sprouting into his head. A sequel to Free Guy, or Deadpool, or Welcome to Wrexham which he’s shooting at the moment for his involvement with the Welsh football team. So many wonderful ideas are sprouting in the mind of Ryan Reynolds. After calling wraps on his last role, though, he’s going to give himself a well-deserved break for the sake of his family.

From the small-town Billy Simpson in Hillside when he was a kid, to Deadpool, to becoming a hugely successful super-star actor and businessman, Ryan Reynolds has got it in the bag, for sure. But the coolest thing is that he’s humble about how he started off. He remembers those days as an anxious child and how all he wanted to do was just escape.

“Acting has given me a way to channel my angst. I feel like an overweight, pimply faced kid a lot of the time – and finding a way to access that insecurity, and put it toward something creative is incredibly rewarding. I feel very lucky.”

We all feel very lucky to have you too Ryan. Call Ryan Reynolds the nicest guy in Hollywood, a powerhouse in business, an icon of success, a vessel of hope for the anti-hero or under-dog. Hollywood’s best, brightest star.