Ryan Reynolds Discusses Estrangement With Late Father And His Battle With Parkinson’s (Image credit: Instagram/Ryan Reynolds)
Ryan Reynolds has candidly shared the profound effect of his late father’s Parkinson’s disease on their relationship almost a decade after his death. Ryan’s father, James Chester Reynolds died at the age of 74.
Reynolds, who shares four children with his wife Blake Lively, has explored how his father’s health struggles influenced their dynamic. In an interview with People magazine, Reynolds described his father as a man who was emotionally reserved. “I have to preface this with the fact that my father was a man who does not share his feelings,” Reynolds said.
“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,” he said.
The 47-year-old actor, the youngest of four brothers, elaborated on how his father’s struggle with Parkinson’s disease affected their relationship. “My father was really slipping down a rabbit hole where he was struggling to differentiate between reality and fiction,” Reynolds explained in an interview with People magazine.
He noted that his father developed delusions and conspiratorial thinking, which was a significant departure from the man he had known. Reynolds also acknowledged his own role in their estrangement. “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,” he admitted.
“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,” he said.
Despite the challenges, Reynolds found closure by writing a letter to his father before his death, expressing his love and appreciation, according to People magazine. Now, as a father himself, Reynolds is focused on creating a different dynamic with his own children. “The healing for me really comes more through my relationship with my own kids, while taking some of the things from my father that are of immense value,” he said.
“To be able to get down on their level and just tell them that I believe them and that I’m here for them–I’m like, ‘Oh, okay. I just weirdly didn’t mean to, but I fixed something with my own dad,'” he said.
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