We want to cling to things that remind us of our loved ones. Especially those whom we could not say we love them when they were with us. When those things are of our parents, we just never want to let go. Often, when we realize the importance of expressing our feelings to our parents, it is too late. Ryan Reynolds talks about his relationship with his father on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman. 

How deeply Ryan Reynolds was connected to his father?

It is not that Ryan didn’t love his father or vice versa. It is just that when Ryan was growing up and becoming young, his father was a little tough man, as almost all the fathers are. They just didn’t have that connection with each other where they can just be themselves. Emotionally distant from his father, Ryan is very close to his daughters.

While talking about his father, Ryan tells David that his daughters would have changed the old man. As a child, his only dream was to sit with his father and know how he feels. Being the youngest of the four brothers, Ryan got little chance to know his father.

Because he didn’t have the father he wanted as a child, Ryan decided to be that father for his daughters. He and Blake make a great pair when it comes to healthy parenting.

At the beginning of the episode, Ryan started making a pizza and, toward the end, it was ready to eat. While eating the homemade pizza, he puts a bottle of wine on the table and tells David the story of the bottle. He says his dad used to make wine in the basement of their house, in a garbage can. He takes the bottle and shows it to David. “This is Tammy and Jim’s special reserve,” introduces Ryan and adds, “It is not great. But it’s really the only thing I have left of him. It’s this bottle of wine.” 

Ryan also adds that his dad would spend days down there making this. Ryan empathizes with his father and says that he has a different view of his father now than he used to. “I have so much empathy for a guy who just wanted to kind of, you know, have something besides, you know, mowing the lawn and going to work,” tells Ryan.

And his love for his father and his changed perspective of him is visible when he admits they named his daughter after her grandfather because he died at the same time she was born. The Adam Project star immortalized his father’s love by naming his daughter after him.