Before Ryan Reynolds was Deadpool, before he was the world's most charismatic gin salesman, before he was co-owner of a Welsh football club and the internet's favourite husband, he was an 18-year-old in Vancouver making one very sensible decision after a night out.
The career, the franchise, the whole carefully constructed public image of the most likeable man on the internet, it all very nearly never happened. Reynolds has just gotten candid about an incident from his late teens that, by his own account, changed everything. And the cruellest part? He was doing the right thing.
Ryan Reynolds is one of the most universally liked actors of his generation, but we can be lucky to still have him around
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When he was just 18, he was on his way home from a bar and got hit by a drunk driver
The story resurfaced in the most Ryan Reynolds way possible. Reynolds sat down with GQ Magazine alongside his Wrexham A.F.C. co-owner Rob McElhenney for an interview that involved the two of them attempting to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture together, which, if you have ever tried it, you will know is its own particular kind of character test.
As the assembly descended into the kind of chaos that IKEA reliably produces, Reynolds reached for a point of comparison. He said that the last time he "why God-ed" this was when he was 18 years old, and he ended up in a coma after being hit by a car. A bit dramatic for a simple Kallax assembly, don’t you think?
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This was after he actually decided to walk home because he had also been drinking
Reynolds,49, had been out for a drink in his hometown of Vancouver at 18 years old. When it came time to go home, he made the call that every responsible person is supposed to make, he left his car and walked. He was crossing the street when a drunk driver hit him. "He hit me so hard that his car was not operational," Reynolds told GQ.
He broke every bone in his left side. He was hospitalised for four weeks and spent three days in a coma. His co-owner, Rob McElhenney, sitting across from him, surrounded by flat-pack furniture, was shocked by this retelling as it was his first time hearing about it, a truly remarkable thing to learn about your business partner mid-IKEA assembly.
Image credits: jcomp / Magnific (not the actual photo)
He was in a coma for four days and broke almost every bone on the left side of his body
Reynolds has spoken about the aftermath before, in a 2011 interview with CTV News, and one detail in particular has stuck with people. He recalled waking up to find his father sitting beside him, holding a vomit tray. Reynolds had apparently been heaving while unconscious for three days.
"Nothing says love like painting someone with three-day-old Gin Rummies," he said. "Just soaked the man head to toe in my vomit." Only Reynolds could turn three days in a coma into a punchline. He did make a full recovery, though he has noted that "since then, I've been a rickety, broken mess." Which, for a man currently running a film franchise and a football club simultaneously, is not the ideal condition.
Image credits: jaromirchalabala / Magnific (not the actual photo)
As it turns out, the drunk driver incident was not the last time Reynolds would sustain a crazy injury. While filming Safe House, the 2012 action thriller in which he starred alongside Denzel Washington, Reynolds spent the shoot getting fairly comprehensively beaten up, as action films tend to require. His neck was in agony throughout and continued to hurt for six or seven months after filming wrapped.
He eventually went to get an X-ray, presumably expecting some minor muscle strain or a pinched nerve. The doctor looked at the results and laughed. "You broke your neck," he told Reynolds. Both his C5 and C6 vertebrae were fractured. Reynolds had been walking around for the better part of a year with a broken neck, filming scenes, doing press, and generally getting on with his life.
"You think you're an actor and you think the stunt guys do it all," he said, "but you get beaten up." He noted that the experience had given him a considerably more relaxed attitude toward letting the stunt double take over. "I'm good. I'm fine," he said. A man who has now survived a drunk driver, a three-day coma, and an undiagnosed broken neck. Genuinely one of the most durable humans in Hollywood.
Do you know of any other celebs who have suffered similar incidents? Tell us about it in the comments!
People in the comments seemed all too relieved that his funny bone seemed to have survived this terrible ordeal
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