Ryan Reynolds is for bringing life to the crazy character of Deadpool, but he wasn’t always the stylish, Aviation Gin owner. He’s been in the industry for a long time, but it definitely took a while for his professional life to take off. For fans who adore the actor as much as we do, they might be surprised to know that there have been 2.4 million Google searches on just his eight-pack of abs.
His hidden weapon, however, is his wicked sense of humor and that’s why he has been able to portray Deadpool so well. He is married to the stunning Blake Lively and now has two beautiful blonde children (with a third on the way). But it wasn’t always that way. He used to be in Green Lantern for one, which is not his best shot at fame but it is where he met his future wife. There are many things to know about Ryan long before he became an A-list actor and married Blake. Check out these 20 surprising things about Ryan Reynold’s life before he had babies with Blake.
20. HE GOT HIT BY A CAR WHEN HE WAS 19
When Ryan Reynolds was 19, he was hit by a car. He was actually walking home because he left a bar and didn’t have the most level-headed of nights and yet he was hit by someone who had been drinking that night. “When I was 19, I was drinking. I was at a bar and I had a few drinks and I thought, ‘You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to leave my car here, be responsible.’ I started to walk home and I was hit by a driver. I broke every bone in my left side. I woke up three days later,” he told a Canadian TV station.
19. HE LIKES TO SLEEP SANS CLOTHES
This is probably the best news for all those female fans out there. If you haven’t heard that one of the most attractive men alive likes to sleep sans clothes. He says that he does it because it’s a means of safety of protecting what is his. He prefers to sleep sans clothes “because if anyone breaks into your house, I can’t think of anything more frightening than a (…) 6’2″ man coming at you,” he told People magazine. That is probably true, no one would expect to see someone like that coming at you. We definitely approve of his choice of dress before he hits the sack, though…
18. HE’S BEEN ENGAGED MULTIPLE TIMES
He’s now married to Blake Lively but she’s not the only girl that he’s been engaged to. In fact, there have been multiple girls. He was also engaged and married to Scarlett Johansson from 2008 to 2011, as well as his ex-girlfriend Alanis Morissette. With Alanis, he was engaged for three years, yet they never actually got married but Ryan was pretty young at that point. He may have wanted to see where his professional life was heading at the time. He seems to have gotten engaged in every significant relationship that he had. He was also married to Scarlett when he met his current wife.
17. ALANIS MORISSETTE WROTE A SONG ABOUT THEIR BREAKUP
The one downfall of dating a singer is that if you break up, she or he will probably write a song about it. Taylor Swift isn’t the only singer that writes songs about her breakups, Alanis Morissette has been known to do it as well. Alanis wrote a song called “Torch” about her relationship with Ryan Reynolds. In fact, her whole album Flavors of Entanglement was about Ryan. “It was cathartic,” Alanis told Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush. “Someone said very wisely to me the other day that catharsis doesn’t mean healing necessarily, and I thought, ‘[Oh!] It’s true.’ But catharsis is good to get it out of my system, for me to see with some clarity what’s going on.”
16. HE USED TO BE ON A YTV TEEN SOAP OPERA
He was a kid when he started acting though you probably don’t remember seeing him in anything. The very first role that he had was on a Canadian soap opera called Hillside. The show was known as Fifteen in the US. He looks so young on the show but you can see the sharp humor that he had even back then. It was the start of a very long opportunity for him and when he was on that soap opera, he probably had no idea just what a successful life he was going to have. He’s come a long way.
15. HIS BROTHERS PIERCED THEIR EARS TO GET HIM OUT OF TROUBLE
It’s true brotherhood when you do something to yourself to make sure your brother doesn’t get in trouble. When Ryan Reynolds was younger, he pierced his ears and he knew that his dad would be mad. His brothers figured out a way to keep him from getting in trouble. “When I was a kid, I wanted to get my ears pierced. My brothers told me, ‘Our dad will [hurt] you!’ I did it anyway. At dinner, I hear him muttering, and dad is looking at my brothers, who got their ears pierced so I wouldn’t get [screamed at],” he told People magazine. Those are some pretty cool brothers.
14. HE TAKES ALL THE MARSHMALLOWS OUT OF THE CEREAL BOXES
It’s actually a genius idea and for anyone who thinks that Lucky Charms don’t have enough marshmallows in the box, you can always take some advice from Ryan. He likes to take marshmallow from one box and make the next box double the fun. We’re not sure what he did with the sad box without marshmallows. “When I was a kid, I used to extract all the marshmallows from one box and put them in the new box so I’d double the marshmallows. The one food I can’t refuse is Ultimate Pizza in New York. When I walk past it, I’ve got to go in and eat a slice,” he told People magazine.
13. HE DONATED A PINK DEADPOOL SUIT TO THE CANCER FOUNDATION
He donated a pink Deadpool suit to help raise money for a Canadian cancer charity. He made a video while wearing the suit to promote the charity. “Pink is tied, like a beautiful ribbon, to a cause very close to me: cancer,” he said in the clip, “So Omaze and I are joining together to scare up some serious cash for [..] Cancer…I’m going to donate the very suit off my back, while giving you the chance to own some movie marketing memorabilia.” He also made a cute post about the suit captioning it, “Suit for sale. Worn once. Made lovingly with over 10,000 individually selected pink gummi bears.”
12. HE IS CPR CERTIFIED
Ryan Reynolds got his CPR certification at the Red Cross and it turns out it’s a good thing that he did. He was able to save his nephew’s life because of his first aid experience. He likes to encourage others to get their CPR training as well so that they are prepared if they ever find themselves in a similar situation. He posted a photo of himself on social media revealing how he felt about CPR. He wrote, “Years ago, I took a CPR course thru the Red Cross. And holy (…), I ended up saving my nephew’s life because I knew what to do! True story! Yesterday I took a refresher course – focusing on infant and toddler CPR. It takes only a few hours and it’s also kinda, sorta fun.”
11. HIS FIRST KISS WAS NOT PLEASURABLE
It’s probably rare to find someone that says that their first kiss was the best kiss that they ever had. Sure, there are some people that may say their first kiss was “magical” but a lot of people will also say that it was awkward. Ryan told People that his first kiss was not something he would ever want to relive. “Deanna was her name. God, I was in sixth or seventh grade. It was kind of gross. She went for tongue, and I wasn’t ready for that. The whole thing freaked me out.” There you have it, not magical at all.
10. HE PLAYED FOOTBALL FOR NINE YEARS
The great thing about Ryan Reynolds is that he never forgets where he came from, all the way from Vancouver, Canada. He appeared on the FOX NFL halftime show from New York City and had a talk with Michael Strahan. The host asked him if he grew up playing football and Ryan responded with, “I played nine years of football. I loved it. I watched the CFL growing up and the BC Lions were my team…” He definitely has a passion for many different things and we love how in touch he is with where he grew up and what he did.
9. HIS FIRST MAJOR PURCHASE WAS A MOTORCYCLE
We all have that one thing that we dream of purchasing when we come into some money. For Ryan, when he started making good money in his professional life, he wanted a motorcycle which is something that a lot of guys want. He also did something for his mother that was pretty cool. He told People magazine, “Definitely a motorcycle. I have three. The biggest purchase was probably an apartment for my mom in Vancouver.” The purchase for his mother was really sweet and wonderful and a lot of celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and The Rock have done the same thing.
8. HE KEPT THE SUIT BECAUSE IT TOOK 11 YEARS TO MAKE DEADPOOL
It’s crazy to think that Deadpool took 11 years to be made And Ryan Reynolds wasn’t sure that it would ever get made. Ryan put his heart and soul into making sure that the movie did get made and that people loved it. It was an executive that saw him in Blade: Trinity and thought he would be perfect for the role of Deadpool. After the movie was made Ryan made sure to keep the stuffed unicorn wearing leather chaps that Deadpool carried around in the movie. He also said that he “waited 10 years to do the film so [he’s] keeping the (…) suit.”
7. HE DIDN’T TELL HIS FAMILY HE MOVED TO LA AT 19
Everyone who wants to be a serious actor knows that at some point they have to move to Los Angeles and Ryan Reynolds moved there at the tender age of 19. He also didn’t tell his parents about it. He left college and went to chase after his dreams. It takes a brave person to just drop everything they are doing in life and chase after something that has no guarantees behind it. In the case of Ryan however doing things the hard way certainly paid off for him and he’s living the life of his dreams now.
6. FIELD OF DREAMS MADE HIM CRY
For anyone who has actually seen the movie Field of Dreams, you can probably relate to this confession of Ryan’s. When Ryan was being interviewed by People, the interviewer asked Ryan when was the last time that he had cried and Ryan gave a very honest answer. “This is a bad one — I watched Field of Dreams again the other day. When he says, ‘You wanna have a catch? I could remedy a drought.” It’s obviously a favorite of his and he’s watched it multiple times. We agree wholeheartedly that it’s a sad movie but also a great one.
5. HE BROKE A VERTEBRAE WHILE DIVING OFF A BRIDGE
Apparently, Ryan Reynolds enjoys extreme sports and, in this case, he almost broke his back. While in Zurich, he dove off a bridge and broke a vertebra by doing so. Which is really pretty intimidating. “When I was 19… I jumped off a bridge in Zurich, I watched a friend of mine do it. And I dove into the water and I got up and I was like, ‘God something is really wrong because I feel like I’m entirely (made of) magic.’ My skin was tingling…,” Contact Music quoted him as saying. “I broke a vertebra in my back, which is just an idiotic thing… I was perfectly sober,” he added.
4. HE FELL FOR LIVELY WHILE DANCING ALONE IN TRIBECA
Sometimes we hear celebrity love stories that just melt our hearts. In the case of Ryan Reynolds, it’s possible that he and Blake Lively are truly meant to be together. He was GQ Man of the Year and he told the interviewer about how he knew he was in love with Blake. “No, we were hanging out at this little restaurant in Tribeca that’s open really late, and this song came on and I was just like, ‘Want to dance?’ No one was in there, so it was just totally empty. And it was just one of those moments where halfway through the dance, it was like, ‘Oh, I think I just crossed a line.’ And then I walked her home. And, uh, you know, I don’t really need to go into what happened after that.”
3. HE GAINED 25 POUNDS OF MUSCLE FOR ‘BLADE’
We all noticed how amazing Ryan Reynolds looked in the movie Blade: Trinity and like most action stars, he had to transform his body for the role. That’s no easy task and for Reynolds, it was all worth it. “It’s all weights for two hours. No cardio at all; I can’t run at all. But it’s so sad because I train for six months, and it’s really fantastic to feel like that. And then I stop, and 4½ weeks later I turn into a skin-colored whisper. It’s so sad. When I’m not training, I run. I love to run. I run three or four days a week for five miles.”
2. HE FLUNKED OUT OF DRAMA CLASS
You might think that someone who wanted to be an actor would do well in drama class but that was not the case for Ryan Reynolds. In fact, he flunked out of drama class. It appears as if his acting chops were far from obvious or maybe he just wasn’t that into theatre class. Either way, it didn’t stop him from pursuing his dreams. It wasn’t long after that, that he landed the role on the soap opera called Fifteen. It may not have been his big break but it was certainly a start in a long and prosperous life.
1. HE DEVELOPED CLAUSTROPHOBIA FROM THE MOVIE ‘BURIED’
We couldn’t imagine what it would be like to film a movie that required an actor to be inside a box for long periods of time. That’s what Ryan Reynolds had to do when he signed up for the movie, Buried. During filming the movie, Ryan said that he suffered from claustrophobia by the end of filming the movie. He felt like he was trapped in a coffin. Essentially, he was in a coffin for long periods of time and they would gradually fill the coffin with more sand as the filming went on. He described the last day of shooting as “unlike anything I experienced in my life, and I never ever want to experience that again.”