  In his newest film, Adventureland, Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds plays the handyman of the titular theme park whose idea of himself is in no way based in reality. |
LOS ANGELES — How Canadian. Ryan Reynolds considers his indefinableness a strength. Plus, he’s really polite about it.
“I haven’t really had a billion-dollar success,” he says, “which has been an unbelievable gift because I can go from one genre to another. It’s not, ‘He’s just done this or that.’ For the most part, I’ve been able to navigate myself way through different movies. My career’s been moving up slowly, one notch at a time. I’ve never had that tsunami of success fall on my lap. And I’m glad I didn’t because that would be difficult for anyone to deal with ...
“The fact I can do a movie like Adventureland and then go to Wolverine to The Proposal, this big romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock, in the space of a year is pretty amazing.”
Maybe so, but it’s also consistent with a career that has, as he correctly observes, defied easy categorization: Shuttling from broad-strokes comedies (Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, Just Friends) to slick horror thrillers (The Amityville Horror) to slam-bang slugfests (Blade: Trinity) to surreal existential fantasies (The Nines).
Now 32, Reynolds admits to being “freaked out” at the thought he’s suddenly no longer a neophyte, but a seasoned industry veteran.
“I always think I’m just starting out and then I realize I’ve been doing this for 17 years. I’m definitely in the union; I know I’ve reached the minimum for medical at this point.”
Opening Friday, Adventureland casts Reynolds as the unlikely elder statesman amid a youth-fuelled ensemble; he plays the handyman of the titular theme park and beau of the alluring but much younger Em (Kristen Stewart). Set in 1987, the loosely-autobiographical comedy is director Greg Mottola’s followup to Superbad.
“I liked the complexity of a guy living a fantasy life,” Reynolds says. “He has an idea of himself that is nowhere based in reality ¬— a guy who’s fulfiled probably none of his ambitions and he’s inserted himself into a position where he’s the biggest fish in the smallest pond.”
It’s a position, frankly, unfamiliar to Reynolds, who is astutely aware of his own place in Hollywood’s pecking order. “For every 20 scripts you read, one is decent and for every 50 you read, one or two are great. So they’re hard to find. And Hollywood is based on a very dynamic hierarchy. You fall in love with something and it’s gone already. I remember falling in love with a script years ago only to find out to my shock and horror that the movie had been released three years earlier. It had been shot, chopped and released.”
Reynolds spent his own formative years in Vancouver. Back in 1987, at the age of 11, he remembers “doing paper routes. That was my summer job ... I was a pretty introverted kid. I was pretty much an average student in every sense of the word — played a few sports, Vancouver life, you know. I was the youngest of four brothers so it was just a challenge to get through dinner without a contusion to the face.”
Later on, he graduated to graveyard-shift worker at a grocery store. “When you’re young, you’re suddenly thrust into a position of pseudo-responsibility and weird things happen. At that grocery store, I worked from midnight to 8 a.m. I would never trust a bunch of 18-year-olds working at my grocery store unsupervised all night. Probably the last hour was when we got all the work done. Before then it was just a bunch of hooligans throwing exotic fruit at each other.”
Although Los Angeles has been his adopted home for more than a decade, he still has a house in Vancouver and visits frequently; it was in B.C., after all, where he married actress Scarlett Johansson last year (a relationship he declines to discuss). His perspective on the two cultures is probably, at least among Canadian transplants residing in the U.S., not unique.
“I miss the low-key nature of Canada a little bit. America is obviously large and powerful and there’s a huge sense of entitlement, which for a Canadian can be refreshing because you know the culture in Canada is that of reservation. It can be a bit apologetic. I almost wish you could fuse the two countries — the mentalities — together and create one super-country. Not that I want to give the American government any ideas. We have a very small military (in Canada) — sarcasm and pylons.”
Reynolds perfectly cut out to play coveted role
LOS ANGELES — Some mutations take longer than others.
Case in point: Ryan Reynolds’ eight-years-in-the-making cameo as Marvel’s mutant mercenary Deadpool — a crimson-clad, katana-wielding wise-ass who interacts with Hugh Jackman’s Logan — in May’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
For finicky fanboys, it is that rare example of casting that should satisfy everyone — even, Reynolds notes, the character himself. “Deadpool in his comic book mentions me playing him in the movie.”
In fact, the role had for so long been considered Reynolds to lose that even though he was committed to two other movies when the offer was made, he decided, “I couldn’t live with myself with the thought that someone else would play Deadpool. I’ve wanted to play him for eight years. It actually turned out to be quite fortunate because I didn’t have time to be in the movie a whole bunch and they were just looking for a cameo, so I jumped in and did it.”
Reynolds’ connection to the character dates back nearly a decade when, following the success of Bryan Singer’s X-Men in 2000, comics suddenly became hot Hollywood properties.
“They were talking about doing a Deadpool solo movie, but no one could decide on the concept or the avenue to tell that story so it kind of dissolved over time. So when it came back after all this time, I was going to be damned if I didn’t play it.”
And just what is it about Deadpool that so appeals to him?
“I liked that his weapons just aren’t his katana swords — there’s also his mouth. He’s the ‘Merc with the mouth’ is what they call him. I thought that was a refreshing voice in the X-Men universe.”
Of course, there’s always the likelihood Reynolds could still wind up starring in a solo Deadpool sequel — though he is careful not to count his franchises before they’re hatched. “I know that’s all hearsay until you’re actually breaking for lunch the first day.”
Deadpool isn’t the only superhero Reynolds has been linked to. For a time, he was believed a frontrunner for The Flash. And had Blade: Trinity been a smash, audiences probably would have seen Reynolds and fellow vampire slayer Jessica Biel spun-off into a sequel to call their own.
Fast feet? Or a faster mouth? What superpower would Reynolds want to have if he had the choice?
“I always wished I could breathe underwater. That would be great.”
When it’s pointed out Aquaman — HBO’s Entourage aside — has never been done, Reynolds responds, “That’s because it’s undoable.”
kevin.williamson@sunmedia.ca
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