Buffy The Vampire Slayer

No regrets for Canuck actor Ryan Reynolds

Vancouver’s Ryan Reynolds praises the escapism in his movies like Van Wilder and Blade: Trinity.

Happy to talk about movies, just don’t ask star of Definitely, Maybe about ex-girlfriend Alanis Morissette’s new album

There’s a hint of boredom in Ryan Reynolds as he answers questions in the press room of the Four Seasons Hotel. The Vancouver-born and raised actor is affable, but the way he fiddles with a cap from a water bottle while speaking indicates that he’s performed this ritual many a time.

The pro forma atmosphere disappears when the subject of Alanis Morissette comes up. Reynolds and the singer-songwriter were engaged at one point, but their four-year relationship has recently broken up, allegedly because of Reynolds’ new relationship with Scarlett Johansson.

This spring, Morissette, a notoriously confessional songwriter, is releasing a new album, Flavours of Entanglement, partly inspired by the emotions involved in the break-up. Reynolds professes ignorance of the album.

"I’m not aware of anything about it," he says crisply.

Somewhere Morissette may be humming, "You Oughta Know," her famous anthem written after a previous break-up.

Call the episode one of the hazards of a career spanning nearly two decades in the film and television business, lived in the public eye.

It’s not been a bad career for Reynolds, 31, but something has been lacking. "He’s one of those actors who makes money and people know him and people like him, but he’s never actually been in a really great film," director Carl Bessai, a fellow British Columbian, commented recently.

If his latest film, Definitely, Maybe, a romantic comedy that opens Thursday – Valentine’s Day – doesn’t quite fit into the category of "a really great film," it has a high professional finish: it’s written and directed by Adam Brooks, screenwriter on such movies as Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, and a Toronto native.

"It didn’t hurt that we were from the same country and culture," says Reynolds. "I think Canadians really understand the benefits of infusing humour with very real and serious subject material. It’s a nice balance and it’s a nice way to tell a story."

Reynolds’ career began when he was 13. "I was the youngest of four boys, which didn’t make me so much the youngest son as a moving target, so I was interested in exploring various things, including acting," Reynolds recalls.

The makers of a teen soap opera, Fifteen – subsequently aired on Nickelodeon – came to Vancouver and issued a "cattle call," inviting all and sundry to read for a part. Reynolds responded and got a part. For the next two years, 1991 to 1993, he was on a set in Florida. His father, a food wholesaler, and mother, a retail salesperson, were wary but approving.

"I can’t figure out why they allowed me at 13 to go off to Florida with a bunch of strangers," Reynolds says. "I guess they felt safe in the people who were organizing this event. I think at first they were a little nervous; they wanted to see how it went and then after a while they really began to love it. They came to premieres, they got to experience the fun part."

Returning to Vancouver, he found parts in obscure television movies. At one point, he rejected an offered role in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. "I love that show and I loved Joss Whedon, the creator of the show, but my biggest concern was that I didn’t want to play a guy in high school," Reynolds says. "I had just come out of high school and it was f------ awful." (He was tormented by bullies.)

Reynolds did land a part in the ABC sitcom Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place, which aired in 1997.

He subsequently launched a career in popular, if not exactly prestigious, American movies, playing the title role in the 2002 National Lampoon comedy Van Wilder, about a campus party animal to end all campus party animals, and a foe of vampires in the 2004 Blade: Trinity.

His performance in the latter role was chiefly distinguished by his gaining 25 pounds of muscle to lend credibility to his heroics, and to enable him to take off his shirt onscreen with suitable effect. He calls the weight gain, induced by weightlifting and eating every two hours, "a morbid experiment to see how far I could push myself." No human growth hormone involved. "It was just diet," he says. "I had the time and a trainer to show me what to eat and what to do."

The weight gain has come and gone – what Reynolds hopes is more enduring is his increased range as an actor.

"Every film I’ve done these last couple years has been outside my typical wheelhouse," he says. But he has no regrets about his frat boy and vampire-hunter past.

"I don’t regret anything," he says. "I don’t regret having been beaten up in elementary school by the next door neighbour. All these things led me to where I am. It builds character. I have no regret about doing any of this stuff. I love to watch those types of movies. I like larger-than-life aspects of them. It’s performance rather than real life: it’s escapism and I think there’s a definite value to that."