Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively Want 4 Kids to Have ‘Normal’ Childhood

Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively are both Hollywood A-listers, but they’re committed to giving their kids a regular life.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Friday, December 13, the Deadpool actor opened up about his family.

Reynolds and Lively share four children together: daughters James, 9, Inez, 8, and Betty, 5, as well as a son, Olin, whom they welcomed in early 2023.

“We try to give them as normal a life as possible,” Reynolds told the outlet.

“I try not to impose upon them the difference in their childhood to my childhood or my wife’s childhood,” the actor continued, reflecting on both his and Blake’s respective upbringings and how his perspective on raising children has changed.

“We both grew up very working class, and I remember when they were very young, I used to say or think, like, ‘Oh God, I would never have had a gift like this when I was a kid,’ or, ‘I never would’ve had this luxury of getting takeout,’ or whatever,” Reynolds shared.

“Then I realized that that’s not really their bag of rocks to carry,” he said, adding that his children had begun showing their own values. “They’re already very much in touch with gratitude and understanding the world enough to have a strong sense of empathy.”

Reynolds explained how his children make him and Lively feel secure in their parenting style.

“Those are the things that I would think [would indicate] we’re doing an OK job — if our kids can empathize with other people and other kids,” he said, but acknowledged that no matter what, his children will grow up with a different childhood than the one he had.

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“Yes, it’s different,” he told THR. “When I was a kid, you would just suck it up, get out of the house and be back by sundown, which I just can’t even imagine now.”

Reynolds also addressed the recent news that he would take a break from filming.

“I’m still working in the sense that I’m writing, whether on Boy Band or another thing I can’t talk about yet. I don’t have an ‘idle hands are the devil’s plaything’ issue,” he shared. “If I’m not working, I don’t yearn for it constantly. Boredom is a very undervalued asset these days, too. We as a society just entertain ourselves to death 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The best ideas that I’ve ever had have always been born of boredom, where your mind is allowed to wander and go into that sort of stasis of being and not doing.”