Ryan Reynolds Says His ‘Greatest Superpower’ Is ‘Knowing Who I Am’

• Ryan Reynolds opened up on his long, winding path toward becoming a movie star and media mogul at the TIME 1000 summit in New York City
• During his appearance, the Deadpool & Wolverine actor referred to “knowing who I am” as “the greatest superpower I ever had in my life”
• “When you’re young and in your 20s, at least I was, you’re trying on personalities like they’re shirts,” Reynolds said

Ryan Reynolds is sharing what he considers “the greatest superpower” he has.

The actor, 48, appeared at the TIME 100 summit in New York City on Wednesday, April 23, to discuss his acting career, work with U.K. soccer club Wrexham A.F.C. and a number of other businesses he owns.

When asked how the media attention on his life affects his various businesses during a conversation moderated by TIME correspondent Eliana Dockterman, the star noted that he felt he did not feel fully at ease with himself until his 30s.

“The last [talk] I did, I mentioned that the greatest superpower I ever had in my life — I’m not talking about just my career or anything — was knowing who I am,” Reynolds said.

“When you’re young and in your 20s, at least I was, you’re trying on personalities like they’re shirts. You’re literally just, ‘I’ll be this person, I’ll be that person.’ Then one day, you’ve stolen from 1,000 — so you’re a genius, not a thief — instead of stealing from one. And you’ve pulled these different references and these feelings and you know yourself,” he continued.

Reynolds recalled that when he spoke to similar sentiments at a past event, someone asked him “how” he identified with himself as he grew older. The Free Guy star remembered when he read two articles about himself — one that depicted him in a negative light, and another that was “so lauding, just like, ‘This guy should have a Nobel prize for blah, blah, blah.’ ”

“My reaction to both was a sort of disconnected, dispassionate observation, not an evaluation. And I thought, ‘That’s weird because both are stories that aren’t true,’ ” Reynolds added. “They’re not what I know to be my story. And it really clicked, and it clicked in every part of my life.”

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TIME’s Dockterman and Reynolds then elicited laughter from the audience when she told the father of four, “You seem to have a lot of perspective for a celebrity — no offense.”

“I think so, thank you,” he responded. “I know a few that can expound. I’m off to see Hugh Jackman after this. He thinks I’m going for a friendly visit. It’s an intervention. ‘You’re working too much, man, you’ve gotta slow down.’ “

Reynolds began acting as a teenager in the 1990s. His earliest roles came in the 1991 television series Fifteen and the 1993 movie Ordinary Magic, before he started finding breakout success with Two Guys and a Girl followed by National Lampoon’s Van Wilder and Waiting… 

Following film hits, like The Proposal and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, PEOPLE named Reynolds Sexiest Man Alive in 2010 and his career reached previously unseen heights when he released his first Deadpool movie in 2016.

Additionally, both Reynolds and wife Blake Lively have been in headlines in recent months after Lively, 37, filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against her It Ends with Us costar and director Justin Baldoni in December 2024.

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Baldoni, 41, countersued Lively, Reynolds and their publicist, Leslie Sloane, and Sloane’s PR firm, Vision PR, Inc., in January. Reynolds then filed a motion to dismiss Baldoni’s lawsuit against him in March. The civil trial in the It Ends with Us case is scheduled for March 2026.

“My career was in the aggregate, it was very slow. I didn’t have that overnight success,” Reynolds said at the TIME 100 summit, reflecting on his journey of success so far. “I was in my 30s when I started [succeeding]. The risk of dying from fame is much lower when you get older, so I was fine with that.”