Ryan Reynolds Opens Up About Late Father’s Long Battle with Parkinson’s

Ryan Reynolds got candid about his late father, who battled Parkinson’s disease, and their complicated relationship.

The Deadpool & Wolverine actor lost his father, James Reynolds, in 2015 after a 20-year struggle with Parkinson’s. In an essay for PEOPLE, published on Wednesday, Aug. 14, the 47-year-old actor reflected on his bond with his dad while the family coped with the debilitating disease—a topic they apparently rarely discussed.

“He said the word ‘Parkinson’s’ maybe three times as far as I knew — and one of them wasn’t to me,” Reynolds shared. “There was a ton of denial, a ton of hiding.”

As the youngest of four brothers, Ryan navigated his relationship with his father—who was diagnosed in 1995—under the strain of the disease, which only intensified existing issues. Describing James as a “man who does not share his feelings,” Reynolds reflected on the challenges they faced.

“He was a boxer, a cop, a hard-a**. I can’t even recall ever really having a proper conversation with my father,” Reynolds said of his dad, who passed away at 74. “He was a present father—never missed a football game—but he just didn’t have the capacity to feel, or at least share, the full spectrum of human emotion.”

Things became even more difficult when lesser-known symptoms of Parkinson’s, such as hallucinations and delusions, began to develop. Reynolds described his feelings at the time, recalling how he thought his dad was “losing his mind.”

“My father was really slipping down a rabbit hole where he was struggling to differentiate between reality and fiction. And subsequently, everyone else in his life was losing the bedrock faith and trust they had in his point of view,” Reynolds explained. “There would be conspiratorial webs that he would spin about ‘this is happening’ and ‘these people might be after me’ or ‘this person is out to get me.’ And just stuff that was such a wild departure from the man that I grew up with and knew.”

Nine years since his father’s death, Reynolds said he’s been “constantly putting pieces of the story together” and reflecting on how he wasn’t “really accepting [his] own responsibility” when he made mistakes in their relationship.

“It was very easy for me to dine off the idea that my father and I do not see eye to eye on anything and that an actual relationship with him was impossible,” Reynolds admitted. “As I’m older now, I look back at it, and I think of it more as that was my unwillingness at the time to meet him where he was.”

“I could have maybe been there with him toward the end, and I wasn’t. He and I just drifted apart, and that’s something I’ll live with forever.”

Now, as a father of four—James, 9, Inez, 7, Betty, 4, and Olin, 1—with wife Blake Lively, Reynolds said his perspective has evolved. Although his parenting style is different from his father’s, he now understands more about the complex dynamics between parent and child.

“The healing for me really comes more through my relationship with my own kids while taking some of the things from my father that are of immense value,” he said. “My dad had incredible integrity. He did not lie. [Now] I get to fill in those little gaps that maybe hurt me. I get to show up.”