RYAN REYNOLDS Finding Answers After Losing My Father

FOR YEARS HIS DAD STRUGGLED WITH HALLUCINATIONS AND DELUSIONS CAUSED BY PARKINSON'S. THE STAR OPENS UP ABOUT HOW LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE DISEASE HELPED HIM FIND PEACE

- ANDREA MANDELL

Ryan Reynolds was 22 when his father, James Chester Reynolds, a former police officer, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but the Vancouver family rarely discussed the topic. “He said the word ‘Parkinson’s’ maybe three times as far as I knew—and one of them wasn’t to me. There was a ton of denial, a ton of hiding,” says Reynolds, whose dad died in 2015 at age 74 after coping with the disease for nearly 20 years.

The two had a complicated relationship, exacerbated by what the Deadpool & Wolverine star later learned were his father’s struggles with hallucinations and delusions, two lesser-known symptoms of Parkinson’s that began roughly 10 years after James’s diagnosis. “It really destabilized my relationship with him because I didn’t really know what was happening,” says Ryan, who has partnered with the educational campaign More to Parkinson’s (moretoparkinsons.​com), which offers resources to patients and caregivers.

Nine years after his father’s death, Ryan, 47, who is the youngest of four brothers, has welcomed his own four children: James, 9, Inez, 7, Betty, 4, and Olin, 1, with his wife, Blake Lively, 36. He opens up to People about what he’s learned about Parkinson’s and the perspective he’s gained through fatherhood.

I have to preface this with the fact that my father was a man who does not share his feelings. He was a boxer, a cop, a hard-ass. I can’t even recall ever really having a proper conversation with my father. 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 a bit.