20th Century Fox – 2015
(LOS ANGELES) — His red-suited alter-ego Deadpool may be virtually indestructible, but Ryan Reynolds confesses he was quite fragile filming his superheroic labor of love.
Reynolds spent years developing the project, and despite his being well-liked, he’d suffered a string of box office failures, including the lead role in the comic book adaptation Green Lantern. Safe to say, the pressure was on.
“I never, ever slept. Or I was sleeping at a perfect right angle — just sitting straight, constantly working at the same time,” the 40-year-old actor and father of two tells Variety. “By the time we were in [post-production], we’d been to Comic-Con, and people went crazy for it. The expectations were eating me alive.”
The movie turned out to be a massive hit, earning more than $760 million bucks on a budget that was modest by superhero movie standards.
He gives his wife, Blake Lively, credit for keeping him “sane” during the shoot. “Blake helped me through that,” Reynolds admits.
Reynolds was diagnosed with anxiety after he completed filming on Deadpool, he told GQ in November. “When it finally ended, I had a little bit of a nervous breakdown. I literally had the shakes,” he said. “I went to go see a doctor because I felt like I was suffering from a neurological problem or something. And every doctor I saw said, ‘You have anxiety.'”
Now, Reynolds is trying to take in all the attention he’s received from Deadpool — including last month’s Critics’ Choice Awards.
It took Reynolds 11 years to get the movie made. But he says he still has a hard time believing that it has become the highest grossing R-rated film and the first live-action comic book film to receive a Globe nomination.
“I think there’s a slight sadness to it,” he tells Variety. “I haven’t really been able to come to terms with it. It’s really proof that literally anything can happen in Hollywood.”
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