Ryan Reynolds starred in a wide range of movies that helped him land the career he enjoys today. But there was a moment earlier on where he wasn’t satisfied with the gigs he was getting.
This resulted in Reynolds taking a long hiatus from acting to explore other options.
Ryan Reynolds quit acting after a disappointing string of movies
Starting out, acting was the only career Reynolds envisioned for himself since he was young. He grew up in a working class household, raised by a father who was a police officer. Reynolds had brothers that followed their father’s footsteps by becoming cops themselves. The Blade Trinity star considered pursuing a similar field of work by becoming a Fireman when circumstances got in the way of that goal.
“I had actually started studying for the entrance exam but then a friend told me that I didn’t have a chance because the fire department had a mandate to hire women and visible minorities,” Reynolds said in an interview with Issuu.
Reynolds’ career as a firefighter didn’t pan out because he was neither. He’d later try his luck with acting. It was a profession he’d already dabbled in as a kid by taking high school drama classes. His drama classes led him to being cast in the teen sitcom Fifteen, which officially marked the beginning of his career.
But while building his portfolio, there was a point where Reynolds became disillusioned by the film industry.
“It wasn’t like I was having a very illustrious career up in Canada. I was doing all of these movie-of-the-weeks with all of these ex-Dynasty stars. It was depressing. I would have rather gone to university or become a teacher, so I did quit, I stopped acting for about a year,” Reynolds once told Rotten Tomatoes.
But Reynolds’ fortune improved after he moved to Los Angeles with a friend on a whim.
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“I was there for a short time and got an agent who sent me on an audition for a show called Two Guys and a Girl and I got that,” Reynolds said.
Ryan Reynolds remembered being ‘unhirable’ after ‘Green Lantern’
Reynolds’ career experienced a steady rise after his move to LA. He became mostly known for featuring in comedy projects like National Lampoon’s Van Wilder. Eventually, Reynolds would make the transition to starring in more serious films.
Blade: Trinity and The Amityville Horror showed Reynolds’ potential for being an action star and leading man. After doing a string of commercial hits, Reynolds established himself as an A-lister.
But his career would experience some turbulence after headlining his own superhero film in Green Lantern. Green Lantern wasn’t the hit many hoped it would be. After both underwhelming critical and commercial performances, the superhero film marked a significant low point for Reynolds. And the star once again experienced a shortage of film work.
“I represented the death of the superhero for a while. After Green Lantern, I was pretty much unhirable,” Reynolds said on Variety’s Actors on Actors.
It was a film was worried about as soon as he’d watched it.
“It was crazy. It was an odd feeling. It was not a feeling I wanted to repeat. So I really spent the following years just owning as much as I could, it was the only way to kind of process it,” he said in a separate Variety interview.
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