Ryan Reynolds on being a working dad: ‘I don’t want to miss this time with my kids’

Ryan Reynolds is a man of many talents—with acting, running an agency, running Aviation Gin, and being a husband and father. It’s the latter two job titles that he’s planning on focusing on for a while.

“Well, I’ve done a lot of [acting],” Reynolds said in a video interview with LinkedIn‘s News Senior Editor at Large Jessi Hempel. “The biggest thing for me, and I know you have kids as well, is that I don’t want to miss this time with my kids.”

In addition to starring in blockbuster movies like Deadpool and Free Guy, he’s also co-founder of creative agency Maximum Effort and the Chief Creative Officer for MNTN, a software platform that acquired Maximum Effort this year. Did we mention he also just wrapped on a Christmas musical titled Spirited? Yeah. He’s a busy guy.

So he’s making the decision to dial back on acting for a bit.

Reynolds shares daughters James, 6, Inez, 5, and Betty, 2, with his wife, Blake Lively. He says it’s really difficult being away from them when he’s working on a movie.

“When I’m shooting a film, I’m oftentimes in Europe, I’m away, there are incredibly long hours, it’s a ton of constant, kind of requirement to be there the whole time — not just because I’m performing but I’m also generally producing and writing on my movies as well,” he said.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Reynolds explains a little more about why now is the “perfect time” to take a little break.

“I’m just trying to create a little bit more space for my family and time with them,” he said. “You know, you don’t really get that time back. For me, it’s really about getting some quality time with my kids before they’re teenagers who loathe me.”

While it’s impossible for any parent to “enjoy every moment” of parenting young children, we also know that they don’t stay little forever. To have the privilege of being able to put work on the back burner to spend more time at home—especially when your job regularly takes you far away from home—is a gift. And Reynolds knows it.

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“I want my kids to have a pretty normal schedule,” he tells Hempel. “For many years when my wife Blake would shoot a film, I would not shoot a film and I would be with the kids and vice versa. So we would sort of trade-off. We never really worked at the same time. But always we were away. So the kids were away too.”

Routine and predictability can be a godsend for parents and kids alike. Being away from your family so often would definitely put a wrench in that routine more often than not, especially as your kids get older.

“Now that they’re in school, they have a somewhat normal schedule,” he explains. “I think it’s totally important for their development and I really enjoy being a present dad. I love taking them to school in the morning, I love picking them up. I love that I have the hours in between to focus on the things that I’m really passionate about like MNTN and Maximum Effort. It is a juggling act.”

It’s so true, isn’t it? We’re all just trying to juggle our home lives with our work lives as we hope for the best. It’s awesome to see Reynolds being so open about how working dads struggle with this, too.

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