Ryan Reynolds had a “very complicated” relationship with his dad.
Ryan Reynolds had a complicated relationship with his dad
The 48-year-old actor was raised in a “blue-collar home” and he’s recalled his dad – who died in 2015, after a 20-year battle with Parkinson’s disease – communicating via “simple grunts”.
The ‘Deadpool’ star told Variety: “My relationship with my father was very complicated.
“I come from a middle-class, blue-collar home, and my dad was of that generation where he was Clint Eastwood. Simple grunts is how he communicated.”
Ryan has actually reevaluated his relationship with his dad in recent years.
The actor – who is married to movie star Blake Lively – explained: “People tell themselves stories, and we have some responsibility as we grow older to question that a little bit. I’ve done that a bit more in the last five years; I didn’t know myself until I was probably 40-ish.
“I ask that question often: ‘Was my dad as challenging as I like to think? Or am I romanticising that to pave over all these other things with whatever the drug is.’ The story is not true; nobody’s black and white like that.”
Ryan previously revealed that his dad’s illness widened the divide between himself and his father.
The actor told PEOPLE: “At the time I just thought, ‘My dad’s losing his mind.’ My father was really slipping down a rabbit hole where he was struggling to differentiate between reality and fiction. And subsequently everyone else in his life was losing the bedrock faith and trust that they had on his point of view.
“There would be conspiratorial webs that he would spin about ‘this is happening’ and that ‘these people might be after me’ or ‘this person is out to get me.’ And just stuff that was such a wild departure from the man that I grew up with and knew.”