Actor Ryan Reynolds reflected on his complicated relationship with his late father, James Chester Reynolds, who silently battled Parkinson's disease for nearly 20 years before he died in 2015 at age 74.
"He said the word 'Parkinson's' maybe three times as far as I knew — and one of them wasn't to me," Ryan told People in an interview published Aug.4. "There was a ton of denial, a ton of hiding."
Their relationship was already strained when his father began experiencing lesser-known symptoms, including such as hallucinations, which started roughly 10 years after James Reynolds' diagnosis.
"It really destabilized my relationship with him because I didn't really know what was happening," Ryan Reynolds said.
The actor said there were multiple reasons why his relationship with his father was so complicated. Fueling things was that James Reynolds "was a man who does not share his feelings."
"I can't even recall ever really having a proper conversation with my father," Ryan Reynolds said. "He was a present father, never missed a football game, but he just didn't have the capacity to feel, or at least share, the full spectrum of human emotion a bit. And pride was just so ingrained in him that it dictated almost everything that he did."
When James Reynolds began to experience hallucinations and delusions, Ryan Reynolds struggled to understand what was going on.
"At the time I just thought, 'My dad's losing his mind.' My father was really slipping down a rabbit hole where he was struggling to differentiate between reality and fiction. And subsequently, everyone else in his life was losing the bedrock faith and trust that they had on his point of view," he said. "There would be conspiratorial webs that he would spin about 'this is happening' and that 'these people might be after me' or 'this person is out to get me.' And just stuff that was such a wild departure from the man that I grew up with and knew."
In the years after James Reynolds' death, Ryan Reynolds said he began to reflect more deeply on their dynamic, "constantly putting pieces of the story together." Looking back, the "Deadpool & Wolverine" star said he was not accepting his responsibility in the situation.
"It was very easy for me to dine off the idea that my father and I do not see eye to eye on anything and that an actual relationship with him is impossible," he said. "And as I'm older now, I look back at it, and I think of it more as that was my unwillingness at the time to meet him where he was. I could have maybe been there with him toward the end, and I wasn't. He and I just drifted apart, and that's something I'll live with forever."
There were, however, also "many moments" of connection between the two. Ryan Reynolds recalled sending a letter to his father five months before he died, which he was "grateful" for doing. In the letter, Ryan listed "every amazing thing" James Reynolds ever did.
"Every time he showed up or every time he had a catch with me outside after baseball practice," Ryan Reynolds said. "Every time he just was there. And if the man couldn't express his emotions in a way that was dynamic, well, many people can't. The guy was born in the '40s. It's OK.
"So I'm super grateful that I sent that letter. I know for a fact it meant the world to him. So I did get that closure, but I wasn't with him when he passed away, and I do wish I was."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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