Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively are raising their four children in New York, but he revealed that his little ones are all proud dual citizens.
“My kids, they have Canadian passports as well, and they feel a real connection to that,” Reynolds, 47, told Deadpool and Wolverine costar Hugh Jackman in a People interview published on Saturday, June 1. “It’s a point of pride of theirs. They’ve also spent huge amounts of their formative years in Canada and particularly Vancouver.”
They were with Reynolds as he filmed the first two installments of Deadpool as well as The Adam Project in Vancouver. “I had only one child in Deadpool 1 and I had two on Deadpool 2, but hopefully we don’t do a Deadpool 8 because I don’t want eight kids,” Reynolds quipped.
He and Lively, 36, share daughters Betty, 4, Ines, 7, and James, 9, as well as a 1-year-old whose name has not been revealed.
Reynolds noted that his kids brag about their roots. “They love being from Canada. They tell people they are. ‘Oh, I’m half Canadian, half American,’” he said.
The actor revealed that he and Lively might even relocate to Canada eventually. “We’ve been — I guess I could characterize it as — subtly looking for a while,” he told the Vancouver Sun in November 2023 about house hunting in British Columbia.
“Thankfully my wife is obsessed with Vancouver and the food scene in Vancouver,” he added. “I’m obsessed with the childhood that I was given and how privileged that was to grow up in a place like Vancouver, which I think has imbued tenets that I have taken and carried with me throughout my entire career. … It has really given me the tools to process and deal with a lot of the things maybe some of my peers maybe have slightly more maladaptive coping mechanisms to deal with.”
At the time, Reynolds was above the border to be appointed to the Order of British Columbia, the province’s highest form of recognition which honors his contributions to the community. He shared his belief that the Canadians he knows want to have a positive impact.
“British Columbia, Vancouver and growing up Canadian I feel like there is some aspect of that that has forged a sense of empathy not just in me but in many of the people I know that I grew up with,” Reynolds said. “I’m still friends with most of the people I went to school with here. They all tend to have something inside of them I think wants to see the world, the country, or the city or whatever you want to call it, a bit of a better place. I am deeply appreciative of that.”
That optimism extends to his close relationships as well. “I think the secret sauce to a long-lasting Hollywood friendship is not too dissimilar to having a partner or a marriage,” Reynolds told Jackman in their new People cover story. “I am genuinely rooting for you, all the time. I want you to win. It’s the same way I feel about Blake. As I’m rooting for her, I know she’s rooting for me, and it’s why we’re so connected.”