Ryan Reynolds’ father suffered from Parkinson’s disease until his death in 2015. His son is now talking about his father’s battle with the disease.
Hollywood superstar Ryan Reynolds (47) was 22 years old when his father James Chester Reynolds was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The former police officer from Vancouver, Canada, died in 2015 at the age of 74 and left his family with deep wounds due to his long-term illness. “As far as I know, he said the word ‘Parkinson’ maybe three times,” his son now reports in a statement. There was “a lot of denial, a lot of hiding” in his family.
It was only much later that he found out that his father also struggled with hallucinations and delusions, a lesser-known symptom of Parkinson’s disease. The actor says that his father’s symptoms began around ten years after his diagnosis. “It destabilized my relationship with him because I didn’t really know what was going on,” says Reynolds today, who is now involved in the “More to Parkinson’s” awareness campaign.
His relationship with his father, whom he describes as a “boxer, policeman, tough guy,” was always difficult because he was a man who did not share his feelings. Although he was always there for him, he did not have the ability to “feel or at least share the entire spectrum of human emotions.” When the symptoms started, he just thought: “My father is losing his mind.” He slipped down a “rabbit hole” in which “he had difficulty distinguishing between reality and fiction.”
Ryan Reynolds also blames himself
His father developed paranoia, suspected conspiratorial plots against him and thought that those around him were after him. As a result, his friends also increasingly turned away from him. “And all of these things were so different from the man I grew up with and knew,” Reynolds admits openly. It was only in the years after his father’s death that he was able to put the events into context. But this process is still ongoing: “I’m constantly putting pieces of the story together.”
Reynolds even blames himself today. He did not really take his own responsibility as a son and young adult back then: “It was very easy for me to feed on the idea that my father and I did not agree in any way and that a real relationship with him was impossible.” But today he sees that this was also his own reluctance to “meet him where he was.” “I could have been with him until the end, but I wasn’t. He and I grew apart, and that is something I will always have to live with,” Reynolds continued.
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
