Ryan Reynolds Gets Candid About His Father's Parkinsons

Actor and husband to Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, has a whole host of acting credits under his belt. Between projects like Free Guy, Bullet Train, The Adam Project, and the Deadpool franchise, Ryan has no shortage of works to be recognized for. But in between his acting career and raising his family with Blake, he occasionally talks about his upbringing.

Ryan was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and his parents were both working class, though Ryan began acting at an early age. Here's what we know about the actor's upbringing.

Ryan was born to James Reynolds, a police officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Policemen, before he became a foods wholesaler following his retirement. His mother, Tamara Lee, worked in retail. The actor has a series of small roles in television, starting at age 13, but briefly quit to attend college. Chris Martin was actually the one who convinced him to give acting another try, suggesting he move to Los Angeles to pursue it.

In 2021, Ryan spoke about his mother to EW while promoting The Adam Project:

"There's a line in [The Adam Project] that is from my real life, which is that 'boys always come back for their mamas.' And that's very true when my dad passed away," he said. "I'm one of four boys and it was just like this circling the wagons around my mom. We really all came back for her in a way that I know was incredibly meaningful to her. And to this day she still talks about it."

In 2015, Ryan shared that his father had passed away in a post online. In it, he acknowledged his father's longtime struggle with Parkinson's, which James had been diagnosed with when Ryan was only 22.

“He said the word ‘Parkinson’s’ maybe three times as far as I knew — and one of them wasn’t to me," Ryan shared with People. "There was a ton of denial, a ton of hiding,”

In the interview with People, Ryan also confessed for the first time that his father dealt with hallucinations and delusions about 10 years into his 20-year battle against the illness.

“It really destabilized my relationship with him because I didn’t really know what was happening,” he confessed.

Though he's more comfortable opening up about their relationship now, the actor has confessed that his relationship with his father wasn't always the best, which made it incredibly hard for them to connect -- especially as his Parkinson's worsened.

"It was very easy for me to dine off the idea that my father and I do not see eye to eye on anything and that an actual relationship with him is impossible," Ryan said. "And as I’m older now, I look back at it, and I think of it more as that was my unwillingness at the time to meet him where he was. I could have maybe been there with him toward the end, and I wasn’t. He and I just drifted apart, and that’s something I’ll live with forever."

In 2016, Ryan opened up to Men's Health (via Daily Mail) about his father's passing: "In my dad's dying moments, we were making him laugh. We were all in there together, me and my brothers, just joking with him. And of course we end up busting each other's chops."