What Ryan Reynolds Has Said About Private Life With Blake Lively, Kids
Blake Lively Shares Peek Into Life With Ryan Reynolds & Their Kids
Just Google Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively and you’ll find a pool of headlines.
Not that this is anything new. After all, the public has followed the Deadpool star—who turns 50 Oct. 23—and the Gossip Girl alum’s careers, relationship, family and red carpet fashion for quite some time.
In recent years, however, the attention has taken on a more serious tone as she navigated her since-settled legal battle with It Ends With Us costar Justin Baldoni and speculation about the state of her friendship with Taylor Swift (Lively and Reynolds were noticeably absent from the singer’s wedding to Travis Kelce in July).
"You really see kind of the illusion behind so much of this stuff: You know, digital life versus real life," Reynolds explained during a Sunday Sitdown Live with Willie Geist in April. "Really without getting into too much I’ll just say I’ve never in my life been more proud of my wife—really. People have no idea what’s really going on. And I’ve just never in my life been more proud of someone with that level of integrity that brings that with them and carries that with them in everything that they do."
While the outside noise can feel loud, the couple find solace in the quiet of their private life in New York City and upstate with their four kids: daughters James, 11, Inez, 10, and Betty, 7, and son Olin, 3.
"My wife and kids are everything. I mean, that’s it," Reynolds shared. “When we finally close our eyes to this mortal dumb show, those are the ones that are going to matter."
OK, maybe not quiet.
"Right now, I think it’s just embrace the chaos," the Free Guy actor said on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast in August 2024. "We have four kids: Nothing’s going to be tidy ever again. Yes, it will though—when they all leave the house and they’re all gone."
Plus, Lively is asking for just one simple favor: Cherish this time.
"The whole family is under our roof right now," Reynolds continued. "We have them all, and that is a fleeting thing—not an infinite resource."
Not that every day is perfect.
"It does get to you, and it’s OK to be like, 'F--k, I am dying,'" The Proposal alum continued. "That’s going to happen every other day. But if you can just think about what you would give in 40 years or 30 years to come back and enjoy this one moment."
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Over the years, Reynolds and Lively have given their fans glimpses into these family moments by sharing anecdotes or photos of them and their kids baking, crafting, attending matches for his soccer team Wrexham A.F.C. or pulling pranks—proving the little ones have inherited their parents’ love of humor and trolling.
"For me," he told Entertainment Tonight in November 2021, "it's really about getting some quality time with my kids before they're teenagers who loathe me."
It's a factor Reynolds and Lively consider when taking on roles and juggling their businesses.
“I try to be as present as possible," the Maximum Effort cofounder noted to Access Hollywood in November 2020. "I shoot movies, and my wife shoots movies and we go travel all over the place, and we just all go together. So, I think that that’s been the best part of it is we really don’t spend a lot of time apart."
Which Reynolds says is one of the reasons there can be yearslong gaps between when he suits up as the Merc with the Mouth.
Noting "it swallows my whole life," amid raising four kids, "I don’t ever want to be absentee, and I don’t ever wanna miss stuff," he expressed on Variety’s Actors on Actors series in December 2024. "I kind of die inside when I see their face and they have a competition or a sports thing or something and I missed it.”
But yes, his kids are fans of the films.
"My son, that’s all he wants is, 'Daddy, let’s watch Deadpool Wolverine,'" Reynolds told Geist during their April sitdown, adding Olin loves the *NSYNC song “Bye Bye Bye” in the movie. “He’s 3. Yeah, dad of the year right here.”
Ryan Reynolds/Instagram
That said, the father of four—whose middle daughter made a cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine—clarified he doesn't let his son "see the hardcore parts."
However, Deadpool isn’t the only movie Olin has seen from his parents' catalogue. He’s also a fan of Green Lantern, the critically-derided 2011 film that led to his mom and dad meeting.
"You laugh," Reynolds told the audience at the Wall Street Journal’s CMO Summit last November, "but my son, it's his favorite movie and he watches it every f--king day."
Still, it’s the offscreen life that he’s built with Lively that gives him the most joy.
“I appreciate this mother beyond measure," Reynolds wrote in a Mother’s Day tribute to the actress in May. "She is kind. She is fearless. She’s the absolute love of my life—and to our four little kids, she’s the life of their love."
As the family of six celebrate his 50th birthday, read what Reynolds and Lively have shared about parenthood.
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This Will Make Your Head Spin
"I have seen Frozen with my daughters so, so many times and people don't know this, but if you play Frozen backwards, it's actually a shot for shot remake of The Exorcist," Reynolds joked on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2018.
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Fun Uncle
On Dec. 15, 2016, Reynolds and Lively debuted their daughters James and Inez for the first time, at the actor's Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony (a common setting for notoriously private celebrities to introduce the world to their kids). During his speech, Reynolds said to his wife, "You make everything better—absolutely everything in my life better. You've given us two of the most incredible children that I could ever hope to have. You've made me the father of my dreams when I thought I only had fun uncle potential."
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Best Thing Ever
In August 2016, before the birth of the couple's second daughter, Reynolds told E! News, "There's nothing on earth more grounding than having a baby. It's the best thing that could ever happen to someone."
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The Messy Side
"It's tough when you get pooped on and barfed on, but having a baby is wonderful," the proud mama told NW Magazine in 2016. "Even when it's tough and I'm exhausted, I think, 'I am so fortunate.'"
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A Bullet for Baby
During a visit to the Late Show with David Letterman in 2015, Reynolds gushed about his marriage and his daughter, but made sure viewers knew who was more important. "'I would take a bullet for you. I could never love anything as much as I love you.' I would say that to my wife. And the second I looked in that baby's eyes, I knew in that exact moment that if we were ever under attack, I would use my wife as a human shield to protect that baby."
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The Joys of Fatherhood
In tradition with his dark sense of humor, Reynolds shared this little parenting joke with his Twitter followers in 2016: "Being a father is the single greatest feeling on earth. Not including those wonderful years I spent without a child, of course."
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Daddy's Dirty Work
"I always do the dirty work," Reynolds said on NBC's Today show in 2016. "I'm happy to do the dirty work. So does she, but I'm always, I love getting up in the middle of the night, I'm fine with that, you know, all that stuff."
Fatherhood, he said, has been "amazing."
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Morning Duties
"I had one of those mornings, rare mornings, where my daughter just didn't want me to leave—and it was only because my wife was asleep," Reynolds said in 2016. "But it was like, you didn't want to go. You just like, it kills you."
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There's Dad!
"You know, what was really weird was, we were watching the Super Bowl and my daughter saw it and she totally recognized me. There was like 12 of me, which is just like, to her, was like 24 useless boobs," Reynolds said in 2016. "She was so not impressed. She was like, 'Eh, whatever.'"
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Becoming A Big Kid
"Damn it's hard letting your infant daughter go somewhere alone for the first time, I was a total mess dropping her off at Burning Man," Ryan joked to his Twitter followers in 2016.
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Look Who's Talking
"She's great, man. She's great," the proud papa gushed in 2015 before revealing whether the couple's then-only child James has started speaking. "We're getting a lot of sounds, nothing that sounds like discernible English at this point," he quipped, adding, "I'm mocking her a lot."
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Silly Love
"@vancityreynolds Since the day our baby was born, I've felt so strongly in my heart that you were most likely the father," Lively wrote on Instagram in 2015. "#ILoveYouSoMuchItsSilly."
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It's a Constant Surprise
"Having a baby is just living in the constant unexpected," Lively said in 2016. "You never know when you're gonna get crapped on or when you're gonna get a big smile or when that smile immediately turns into hysterics. It might be like living with a drug addict. But you have a baby and you think, 'I can't imagine ever not having a baby,' because they grow up so quickly. I'd be an 80-year-old woman with a baby if I could."
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Family Is Everything
"It's the best," Lively said in 2015. "It's the thing that binds us all—family. We have very unique jobs for a living, but we all are a part of someone's family. It's a nice thing."
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Father's Day Gift
"On Father's Day, my daughter smiled at me," Reynolds tweeted in 2015. "It was all the gift I needed as I packed a bag and left for 6 years to write a book on parenting."
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Everything's Worth It
"There have been times where I woke up, literally had no idea I had been walking for five minutes," he told E! News while promoting his movie Woman in Gold in 2015.
"But you love it. You wake up in the middle of the night, you got a big stupid smile on your face. I was telling someone else that. Anything else that woke you up every 45 minutes, you'd kill it. But when it's a baby, it's the best thing that ever happened to you."
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Proud Papa
"One of the most common things in the world is making out, having a couple of drinks, and then doing it, and then having a baby. I was perfectly sober for this one though. I gotta say," Reynolds joked in 2016.
"It's amazing. I just always marvel how common it is and yet how profound it is. And I always laugh because you know celebrities you always cringe when they talk about their kids. Like 'my child is the only one that has ever exited a womb out, ever.'"
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Daddy's Little Girl
"Well, a lot of people have done this, so you always want to temper it with a little of self-effacement. But I love it," Reynolds said in 2015 about then-only child James. "I truly worship that kid. It's terrible. She has me so far wrapped around her finger it's dumb. She says 'Dada' and I will walk through a cement wall to get to her."
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