Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds won a lot of praise recently when he opened up about his lifelong struggle with mental health in honor of Mental Health Awareness month. In an Instagram message, he revealed he’s suffered from anxiety throughout his life, which pushes him to “over-schedule, overthink, overwork, over-worry and over-everything.” He concluded that the stigma surrounding mental health needs to be demolished and that the world would be a nicer place if people simply talked about how they were feeling.
He’s now expanded on this further in a new interview with ET, saying that he had to speak out because of his three daughters, who he doesn’t want growing up in a society where they can’t express their emotions. As Reynolds put it:
“Part of it is that I have three daughters at home and part of my job as a parent is to model behaviors and model what it’s like to be sad and model what it’s like to be anxious, or angry. That there’s space for all these things. The home that I grew in, that wasn’t modeled for me really. And that’s not to say that my parents were neglectful, but they come from a different generation.”
The actor seems to be taking up the cause of mental health advocacy with some vigor, which is in keeping with a guy who went out of his way to provide winter clothing for Canadian children and stepped in (alongside It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Rob McElhenney) to buy obscure Welsh soccer team Wrexham.
Reynolds went on to explain why it’s important to share mental health problems, saying:
“Part of that is to de-stigmatize things and create a conversation around [mental health]. I know that when I felt at the absolute bottom it’s usually been because I felt like I was alone in something I was feeling. So I think when people talk about it, I don’t necessarily dwell on it or lament on it, but I think it’s important to talk about it. And when you talk about it, it kind of sets other people free.”
Good for him. Some might consider it a little bizarre that a famous and obscenely wealthy celebrity can be anxious, but like the rest of us, he’s only human. This is good timing, too, as anxiety has been in the headlines lately, with tennis player Naomi Osaka withdrawing from the French Open due to press interviews severely affecting her mental health. Judging by the way she was treated, the more high profile campaigners like Reynolds we get the better.
Of course, Ryan Reynolds is set to have a busy 2021 on the screen. We’ll see him in Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard on June 16th, with Free Guy and Red Notice following later this year.
