Ryan Reynolds is a Marvel star, actor, businessman, soccer club owner, husband, father and brother. He is also a loving son to his beloved mom Tommy; he is her youngest son, born on October 23, 1976 in Vancouver, Canada to Tammy and James Chester Reynolds.
He has long had a close and public relationship with Tammy – she regularly joined Ryan on the red carpet in the early days of his career – and in recent years has herself gone viral several times.
Amid speculation his marriage with wife Blake Lively was over, Ryan tweeted in 2018: "We’re never splitting. She’ll always be my mom. No matter how much jazz-cabbage she smokes with her rollerblading friends."
In 2022 she appeared in an Aviation Gin commercial with Ryan, criticizing her son's every move as he tried to make her a cocktail, and in 2023 he quipped, during the sale of his company Mint Mobile for $1 billion: "We are so happy T-Mobile beat out an aggressive last-minute bid from my mom Tammy Reynolds as we believe the excellence of their 5G network will provide a better strategic fit than my mom's slightly-above-average mahjong skills."
Tammy has also trash-talked Ryan's Marvel colleague Chris Hemsworth as a part of their Fantasy Football series. "Chris Hemsworth is everyone’s least favorite Australian," she read on video from a paper given to her by her son.
"And, as a reminder, Hugh Jackman still exists."
In 2024, to pay tribute to Ryan on his 48th birthday, Hugh shared a series of pictures of the pair together, and jokingly thanked Tammy in the caption "for delivering Ryan".
Ryan's wife Blake has also lovingly trolled Tammy, revealing just how close the mom-of-four is with her son and his wife, as in 2022 Blake took to the stage to honor her husband with the American Cinematheque Award and referenced the "magical night in 1976" that Tammy conceived Ryan.
"I'm looking at you, Tam-Tam. You little hussy," she joked.
Tammy's close bond with Ryan comes as she raised her son along with his three brothers – Jeff, Terry and Patrick – with her late husband James, with whom Ryan had a complicated relationship.
"My dad was a tough guy," the actor told Mr Porter in 2018.
"He was good in many ways as well, but he was tough on us. Growing up in my house, it was never relaxing or easy and I know that, throughout my life, I’ve dealt with anxiety in different ways."
In 2024 he also told People that he "had a rough ten-year patch with my father so we were estranged," sharing that his father was "that stereotypical tough guy" who never discussed his feelings.
"It was very easy for me to dine off the idea that my father and I do not see eye to eye on anything and that an actual relationship with him is impossible," he continued.
"And as I’m older now, I look back at it, and I think of it more as that was my unwillingness at the time to meet him where he was. I could have maybe been there with him toward the end, and I wasn’t. He and I just drifted apart, and that’s something I’ll live with forever."
James was a Canadian Mountie and went on to become a food broker, before he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in the 1990s.
"At the time I just thought, 'My dad’s losing his mind.' My father was slipping down a rabbit hole where he was struggling to differentiate between reality and fiction," Ryan added of the early days before his diagnosis, which came when Ryan was 15.
In 2014, a year before his father passed, Ryan – who has served on the board of directors for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for over a decade – said that he didn't believe his father had ever "said he has Parkinson’s disease".
Ryan has also credited Michael J. Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1991, for helping his dad "feel less alone" while dealing with Parkinson's.