After his timid and insecure debut in 1991 in a Canadian teen soap, he abandoned acting. Fortunately, he was able to change his mind to become one of the essential actors in Hollywood today!
It is now worth more than $350 million. And even. We could easily add at least $300 million more, thanks to judicious investments and his business acumen. Today, Ryan Reynolds has become one of the strongest brands in Hollywood.
From Deadpool to Red Notice via Free Guy and 6 Underground, to name only recent examples, the actor has been able to build over the years the image of a sarcastic and cool character, endowed with the physique of a actor in action films, but armed (and fortunately…) with a lot of self-deprecation, without taking himself seriously, sometimes even becoming his own parody.
Even though his career remains sometimes punctuated by artistic and commercial failures, like Green Lantern, unanimously considered his worst film. But this failure, fortunately for him, did not cause his career to slip for long.
A teenager feeling bad about himself
A beautiful upward trajectory, all the more delicious as it contrasts with his debut on screen. With a babyish face and unsteady lines, it was a 14-year-old Ryan Reynolds who was making his screen debut in Hillside; a Canadian teen soap opera.
Broadcast for four seasons from 1991 to 1993 on the Nickelodeon channel, which will rename the show Fifteen in the United States, it tells the daily dramas of a fictional high school. Reynolds appeared in a total of 18 episodes as Billy Simpson, who suffers from family problems, personal betrayal and heartbreak of course, compensating for his problems by bullying his classmates.
What does it look like ? To that !
A role for which he had secretly auditioned behind his parents’ backs, and which he obtained against 4,000 other suitors. Hats off anyway. It was also thanks to this series that he signed his very first autograph for a young fan who recognized him in a McDonald’s.
However, Ryan Reynolds would confess years later to having hated working on this series, and more generally his experience as a child actor. “I stopped acting after that” he also declared in 2016. “I hated that experience. After that I worked in a warehouse, then a restaurant, for two years.”
It was his on-screen partner in the series, Chris Martin, who convinced him to follow him to Hollywood shortly after, to pursue his career there and above all not to abandon it. A decision that will prove beneficial.
Nickelodeon
In 1993, Reynolds played his first leading role on the big screen in Ordinary Magic, while also landing television roles (including an appearance on The X-Files). After the satire Dick, the Underbelly of the Presidency, in 2002 he obtained his first major role in American Party – Van Wilder public relations, where he played a very relaxed party organizer. A definitive launch into orbit that will soon be confirmed.