Ryan Reynolds Opens Up On Falling In Love With Blake Lively And Having A Nervous Breakdown After Filming ‘Deadpool’

Hollywood heavyweight Ryan Reynolds opened up to GQ‘s Anna Peele on a range of personal topics — from his “estranged” relationship with his late father to falling in love with his wife Blake Lively to the “bit of a nervous breakdown” he suffered after co-writing and starring in 20th Century Fox’s 2016 box-office smash Deadpool — in an interview published Monday.

The interview took place in the barn on an “old upstate New York farm” that Reynolds shares with a “very pregnant Lively” and their daughter, James. The farmhouse “functions as Reynolds’ family center and creative headquarters,” according to Peele.

The interview opened with a discussion of Reynolds’ late father, with Reynolds “giving Peele sh*t” over a conversation they had a couple days prior to the interview.

“Remember how awkward it was when we were talking about my dad?” Reynolds asks.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he had passed away,” Peele replies. “When you said he was ‘scattered to the wind,’ I thought you meant, like, metaphorically.”

Reynolds doesn’t let Peele off easy.

“I love situations like that. I really do,” he continues. “I actually didn’t know I was stringing you along. I thought you were totally hip to the fact that he was super-dead. But no!”

The exchange continues with Reynolds saying, “I had a rough ten-year patch with my father. So we were estranged. Now we’re really estranged.”

It was typical of the often dark, over-the-top, sarcastic humor Reynolds exhibits in his movies, be it an action comedy like Deadpool or a romantic comedy like Just Friends (2005). Reynolds even brought a bit of whimsical humor to his role alongside Wesley Snipes in Blade: Trinity (2004).

Fortunately for Reynolds and his father, they did share a “sort of epic moment that only happens in ?lms” right before his father passed. Reynolds says he “closed the loop as much as I could.”

Why ‘Deadpool’ nearly gave Ryan Reynolds a nervous breakdown https://t.co/mgfT15zHDv

— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) November 14, 2016

After discussing his father, the conversation turned to married life and Deadpool.

“In a few hours, you’re going to be a father of two,” Peele said.

“I’m on the precipice of having a real American family,” Reynolds replied. “I mean, I always imagined that would happen, and then it happened. Every idiotic Hallmark-card cliché is true.”

Speaking of Deadpool, Reynolds acknowledged that he had been working on the script and trying to get the film made, without much luck, for 11 years.

Ultimately he and the others working on it “Trojan-horsed” it through “a regular superhero script.”

“We thought, ‘Okay, if they let us do this, we’ll actually shoot this and hopefully they won’t notice,'” Reynolds said. “Once the test footage leaked, that created a groundswell of support.”

That “groundswell of support” still didn’t lead to enthusiastic support from the studio. Reynolds said they were given the “bare minimum” for initial funding and were basically told to just let the studio know when they had a finished product.

“When it ?nally ended, I had a little bit of a nervous breakdown,” Reynolds confesses.

He was worried he was suffering from some sort of neurological disorder, but after visiting multiple doctors, he learned he was experiencing prolonged anxiety.

Ryan Reynolds’ story about realizing that Blake Lively was “the one” will destroy you https://t.co/xEGjujuoAF pic.twitter.com/gPvwQyDv7v

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) November 15, 2016

When asked about falling love with Blake Lively, Reynolds recalled an evening in a Tribeca restaurant.

“[W]e were hanging out at this little restaurant in Tribeca that’s open really late, and this song came on and I was just like, ‘Want to dance?’ No one was in there, so it was just totally empty. And it was just one of those moments where halfway through the dance, it was like, “Oh, I think I just crossed a line.” And then I walked her home.”

Reynolds and Lively got married in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, in September of this year, after publicly being a couple for nearly a year, according to an article from People.

Before meeting Lively, Ryan Reynolds had relationships with Canadian pop star Alanis Morissette and actress Scarlett Johansson. Blake Lively previously dated Leonardo DiCaprio.

[Featured Image by Mike Coppola/Getty Images]