Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively have been vocal about keeping their baby daughter James out of the spotlight, choosing to only share photos with a select few family and friends. So it comes as no surprise that the actor was "devastated" to discover one of his oldest friends had been trying to sell photos to the press.
Speaking to GQ magazine, the Deadpool star revealed that he had sent personal photos of himself and Blake with their daughter in the delivery room to people he believed were his closest friends and family.
Ryan Reynolds hasn't shared photos of James' face publicly
"A guy that I'd known for my whole life, one of my closest friends growing up, he had been shopping pictures of my baby around," Ryan explained. "I kind of got in front of it, which is good. But it was a slightly dark period. A bad couple of weeks."
Ryan said the friend was, "somebody I've known, who's been one of my closest friends, for 25 years", and he has since been forced to cut all ties.
"It was like a death. It was one of those devastating things to find out," Ryan said, adding: "I don't think he would ever be caught. But it's a pretty narrow group of people that I would send photos like that to. They're just, like, my closest family and my closest friends: 'Here's us in the delivery room!'"
Ryan and Blake welcomed daughter James in December
The 38-year-old has been particularly protective of his daughter, who was born in December, and refrained from even revealing her name until April. Ryan explained that he didn't want to cause any friction between himself and his daughter when she grew up.
"I told everyone who would listen before [the name] was out there that I didn't want to be the first guy screaming it out to the media because, as we know, little girls turn into teenage girls and little teenage girls sometimes scan through the archives and go, 'Why did you do that?'" Ryan said on the Today show.