Blake Lively reveals secret to successful marriage with Ryan Reynolds & why he calls her his knight in shining armour
HOLLYWOOD star Blake Lively has vowed to never leave husband Ryan Reynolds – because she loves her mother-in-law too much.
The Green Lantern actress — who met Ryan in 2010 on the set of the superhero movie — recently hit back at a comment that they had split up.
Responding to an Instagram post of her kissing Ryan on the set of his latest hit film Deadpool & Wolverine, a fan claimed that there were rumours the pair had “got divorced”.
Blake quickly replied: “Haha they wish.”
And now, in an exclusive interview with The Sun, she says with a laugh that Ryan’s mum Tammy is the thing keeping them together.
Blake, 36, jokes: “She’s very controlling . . . No, she’s the best.
“I’m so lucky. The only reason I’m with him is to be with her.”
Tammy has supported Ryan and his three older brothers since their father James Reynolds died of Parkinson’s disease in October 2015.
She has attended many A-list events with her son and Blake over the years, with Ryan even recently taking her to see US chat show The View and sit in the audience with her.
Meanwhile, Blake and Ryan have gone from strength to strength, even recently joking about considering adding a fifth child to their brood of James, nine, Inez, seven, Betty, four, and one-year-old Olin.
Ryan, 47, says the secret to their long-lasting relationship is they’re “genuinely rooting” for each other.
Blake reveals: “My husband calls me his knight in shining armour, which I think is so sweet, because we only hear about men being that.”
When they got together, she says, they “made a rule not to work at the same time” so they could “prioritise their personal life”.
Blake is not afraid to show the world she loves her husband, recently posting a selfie on social media of them together, captioned: “Stop missing me on your press tour.
“Get out there and hustle boy (which is girl code for don’t you ever stop missing me for a second).”
She also admitted taking Ryan’s belongings to work and can be seen wearing his clothes in It Ends With Us, a romantic drama out in cinemas on Friday.
She says: “I wore a lot of my clothes and my husband’s clothes.
“I’m like, ‘Why don’t people like my clothes?
“Oh, because I’m wearing my husband’s clothes’. But I thought it was so cute.”
Blake plays Lily in the film, which is based on a best-selling novel by Colleen Hoover and centres on an abusive relationship.
The actress says of her role: “I hate the word inspiring because it feels so ‘urgh’ — but it is.
“It’s inspiring to see someone experience what they experience and how she comes out of it.
“It was really important to show that Lily didn’t start at the place where she finds herself at the end.
“We always see the damsel who then finds her voice.
“But you can have a voice and you can still be hurt and you can still lose yourself.
“I wanted to see a woman who had real agency and was spicy, kinda like old-timey movie stars like Katharine Hepburn and Rosalind Russell and Barbara Stanwyck.”
While Blake, who starred in teen TV drama Gossip Girl, is often told to make sure the characters she portrays are “likeable”, Ryan is never asked to do the same with his roles.
She says: “Every time that I do a movie, the first note is, in the script, in the execution, in the marketing, in the editing, they are like, ‘We got to make sure she’s likeable.’
“And I went to my husband one day and I said, ‘Have you ever gotten the note where they’re like, we want to make sure this guy’s likeable?’
“He’s like, ‘Nobody’s ever said that’. And my husband plays deeply unlikable people — but you love him!
“Women, they’ve gotta be likeable. Why is that?”
‘Unlikely adventures’
Ryan and Blake have enjoyed huge success on and off screen — taking their combined wealth to £320million.
Blake has beauty brand Blake Brown Beauty, cocktail company Betty Booze and an alcohol-free spin-off Betty Buzz.
Meanwhile, Ryan runs marketing firm Maximum Effort and, since 2018, part-owns Aviation Gin.
He bought a 25 per cent stake in the wireless brand Mint Mobile in 2019, which he sold for a £240million in May this year.
And he bought Wrexham FC for £2million with his actor pal Rob McElhenney while the Welsh club languished in the fifth tier of the English football league.
Ryan and Rob’s unlikely adventures as sports team owners were detailed in the Disney+ documentary Welcome To Wrexham.
The club has since been promoted and is now hoping to reach third-tier League One.
But in March the club released its accounts which revealed Ryan and Rob are actually owed £9million.
And Ryan has also admitted he failed to ask Blake about buying Wrexham.
He said on US talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live: “I remember seeing Blake and saying, ‘I have bad news, and I have really bad news.
“The bad news is I slipped into someone’s DMs again.
“The really bad news is that I might have bought half of a fifth-tier national football league in Wales’.”
Blake’s reaction, he recalled, was “not good”, adding: “We’re still working through that one.”
But his success with Marvel movie Deadpool & Wolverine, in which he stars alongside Hugh Jackman, is sure to cushion the blow to the couples’ finances, with box office takings heading towards £1billion.
When they met, Blake was dating her Gossip Girl co-star Penn Badgley, 37, and Ryan was married to actress Scarlett Johansson, 39.
Blake split from Penn in October 2010 and, two months later, Scarlett and Ryan announced they were divorcing.
The following year Blake and Ryan sparked dating rumours when they were spotted outside an apartment in Boston, where he was filming the action film R.I.P.D, and they spent that Christmas in Ryan’s home town of Vancouver.
They tied the knot in September 2012 — and describing what makes their relationship so strong, while promoting their movie Ryan compared it to his 17-year friendship with Hugh Jackman.
He said: “I think the secret sauce to a long-lasting Hollywood friendship is not too dissimilar to having a partner or a marriage.”
Addressing the Wolverine star, he added: “I am genuinely rooting for you, all the time. I want you to win.
“It’s the same way I feel about Blake.
“As I’m rooting for her, I know she’s rooting for me, and it’s why we’re so connected.”