Like most actors, Ryan Reynolds has had some missteps in his career and been involved in projects he’d rather forget. Unlike other actors, however, Reynolds acknowledges it. It’s rare to see an actor reference a bad project from their past with most preferring to act as though those projects don’t exist. But not Reynolds. He takes multiple opportunities to poke fun at his ill-advised career choices and the questionable bombs of the past.
It’s a surprising stance for an A-list actor, and during the Free Guy virtual press conference, moderator Terri Schwartz asked Reynolds when and how he got so comfortable making fun of himself. As it turns out, Reynolds shrewdly realized that that very tendency of actors to never reference their failures was an area he could capitalize on, especially in marketing:
“It seemed like a really interesting white space, to be honest. You don’t get a lot of – in the marketing world in particular, you don’t get a lot of people shining a spotlight on their own pitfalls. You know, careers are ebbs and flows. They’re ups, they’re downs. But throughout history, at least from my perspective, you don’t see a lot of performers that sort of [acknowledge] the movies that you know just don’t work, and they don’t work for a variety of reasons sometimes. There’s usually very little acknowledgment of that. Everybody’s sort of like, ‘It’s great,’ you know, and it’s…”
He trailed off then, making a face that indicated we all know when a movie is anything but great. However, he was quick to explain that he never makes fun of the other people who worked on a flop with him. He’s always the punchline, no one else. “I think it’s more about just laughing at myself, not laughing at other people, necessarily, that are involved in a project,” he explained. “But laughing at myself and my own contribution to that failure or however you want to characterize it.”
But something surprising happened as he leaned into that self-deprecating sense of humor: He transformed his failures into a net positive. “It was just something that I thought was worth examining, you know? And in examining it, you take that energy that is typically – maybe it’s hurtful or maybe it’s something that’s dragging you down, and you end up creating a sort of mental Judo with it. You’re using its energy against it and creating something positive out of it.”
Though he’s been prone to laughing at himself all throughout his career, that realization really crystalized for him during the promotional run for Deadpool, he revealed:
“I wrote it into the Deadpool script, where I said something like, ‘Please don’t make this suit green or animated,’ when he’s being shoved into the superhero factory or whatever. I noticed that it really felt good to shine a light on that for a second. So I don’t know, it’s just something I’ve always done, but my career is also sort of – I would say the most significant thing that’s ever happened in my career is laughing at myself always. Like, since the start of the work. And there’s plenty there to laugh at.”
Reynolds explains he’s not the only actor who has this in his background. Every actor has projects they regret, or at least understand came together poorly. “Everybody has their own. You know, you lay in bed at night and you think, ‘Oh God, this thing I did was so awful or silly or ridiculous,’ you know?” he said.
Maybe more actors should loosen up and take a page from his book, as he says it’s given him lots to work with. “I think [that attitude has] got this fuel for lots of stuff.”
Free Guy is in theaters on Friday, December 11.
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