Ryan Reynolds is reflecting on an integral relationship in his life.
Nearly 10 years after his father, James Chester Reynolds, died at the age of 74, Ryan—who shares kids James, 9, Inez, 7, Betty, 4, and Olin, born in 2023 with Blake Lively—unpacked their dynamic and how his father’s battle with Parkinson’s disease affected their relationship.
“I have to preface this with the fact that my father was a man who does not share his feelings,” Ryan wrote in an essay for People published Aug. 14. “He was a present father, never missed a football game, but he just didn’t have the capacity to feel, or at least share, the full spectrum of human emotion a bit. And pride was just so ingrained in him that it dictated almost everything that he did.”
The 47-year-old—who was the youngest of four brothers and also son to Tammy Reynolds—explained that his father’s inability to emote with him led to Ryan not quite understanding his father throughout his struggle with Parkinson’s disease.