Ryan Reynolds recently recognized that his kids have yet to see him truly fail.
“My kids, all they see is a winner,” he told The Wall Street Journal at the CMO Council Summit on November 18. “And that’s the thing I worry about most with this [Hollywood] ecosystem you’re talking about here is, like, when I go outside, I get pats on the back, and it’s a selfie parade and I oblige everyone, pretty much. And my kids only see that.”
He added, “So I’ve learned lately to make sure to talk about the failures and how that is literally the base and ingredient for everything else.”
Reynolds, 49, shares four children with wife and actress Blake Lively — James, 10, Inez, 9, Betty, 6, and Olin, 2.
In June, he opened up about how his and Lively’s people-pleasing qualities have certainly been passed down to their children.
“I am people-pleasing by default, as is my wife, as are our first two children,” Reynolds told TIME in a profile for its Most Influential Companies 2025 ranking. “The third was, you know, born flipping the bird. And the fourth is TBD.”
He added that if you’re always trying to impress someone “your boundaries can kind of melt and that’s not necessarily healthy.” So, he often reminds his kids to “disappoint one person” at school each day.
“None of us are comprised of our best moments. None of us are defined by our worst moments,” he told the outlet. “We are something in the middle.”
Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds attend the 2025 Time100 Gala on April 24, 2025 in New York City. Cindy Ord/Getty Images
During the CMO Council Summit, Reynolds also spoke about one of his biggest career failures: the critically and commercially panned 2011 film Green Lantern, on which he met Lively, 38.
“You laugh, but my son, it’s his favorite movie and he watches it every f***ing day,” Reynolds joked of the infamous DC film, adding, “Do you understand the work I’ve had to do to get to the place where I can just pass by that screen and not go, ‘Well, we could have [done something to make it better]?’”
Reynolds explained that, at the time he starred in the movie, those aforementioned people-pleasing tendencies led him to agree with whatever worked for those in charge — arguably to the detriment of the overall project.
“That was a time in my life when I was ‘Yes, sir, no, sir. How high can I jump, sir?’ You sit there and you go, ‘I have really strong thoughts and opinions on a creative matter,’ and someone else on another movie, I remember, made a creative decision, and ‘I thought, well, that’s a nail in a coffin that I alone will lie in.’ And it’s true,” he continued. “They don’t say, ‘This producer’s movie flopped,’ or ‘This director’s [movie flopped].’ That’s me. So if I’m going to be on that headline, I’d like to be the architect of my own demise — or success.”
Ryan Reynolds proved he’s wife Blake Lively‘s biggest fan while supporting her at a recent screening of her movie Another Simple Favor. Following the event on Sunday, April 27, Reynolds reposted a sweet clip shared via the A Simple Favor Instagram account. In the Instagram Story video, Reynolds, 48, was seen standing behind the photographers […]
Reynolds noted that Green Lantern sparked a change in his attitude toward projects — an attitude he hopes his children embrace when they embark on their own careers.
He noted that the “soft parenting” of this generation allows children to “feel safe” and will, in turn, lead them to make “great decisions.”
“I really don’t believe that you have to be screwed up, f***ed up, to make good stuff,” he said, later adding, “[When you feel safe] you really kind of work from a place that isn’t fight or flight. You actually get to be thoughtful, and you get to think about everybody in the room.”