Ryan Reynolds admits sports were ‘the only place he received validation’ from his father James

Ryan Reynolds has revealed the sports field was the only place he ‘received validation’ from his late father James.

The actor, 45, told of his strained relationship with his dad in the new documentary Welcome To Wrexham, which documents his decision to buy the National League football club, with the first two episodes set to be released on Disney+ on Thursday.

Ryan admitted even in the years since his father’s death from Parkinson’s Disease in 2015, the quest to please him ‘doesn’t really go away,’ saying he still views the former cop as a ‘hard-a*s.’

He said: ‘The main place I got validation for my father was I was good at sports, so I played sports long past the point where I was really driven to do sports.

‘It carried on all through show business, an unquenchable quest for validation. My father has been dead for years but that stuff doesn’t really go away.’

The documentary sees Ryan and fellow actor Rob McElhenney join forces to take over Wrexham in the hope that they can get the club back into the English Football League.

Asked why he chose the small Welsh club, Ryan offered insight into his own ‘working class’ upbringing in Canada.

The actor’s life now couldn’t be further away from his humble roots; with Ryan and wife Blake Lively, 34, one of Hollywood’s most A-list power couples.

He said: ‘I grew up in a working class family and I had three older brothers, my father struggled in a number of different ways.

‘My dad started as a cop and then became a food broker, which sounds like a cover for a CIA agent or something but it’s an actual job.

‘The main place I got validation for my father was I was good at sports, so I played sports long past the point where I was really driven to do sports.

‘It carried on all through show business, an unquenchable quest for validation. My father has been dead for years but that stuff doesn’t really go away.’

Ryan added: ‘It’s easier to think of him the way I’m describing him, a hard-a*s, he’d have thought all of this was wild, he didn’t see all of this stuff Deadpool forward so he would have thought all of this stuff was pretty crazy.’

In 2016 Ryan offered insight into his father’s final moments, telling Men’s Health: ‘In my dad’s dying moments, we were making him laugh. We were all in there together, me and my brothers, just joking with him.

‘And of course we end up busting each other’s chops. I recommended that the doctor raise Dad’s dose of Dilaudid in order to make my other brother more tolerable.’

In a recent interview on David Letterman’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, the star admitted that he was ‘mad’ at his father when he passed away, because their distant relationship meant that he felt he ‘never got the chance to get to know him ‘.

Ryan and wife Blake have been together since 2011 since meeting on the set of Green Lantern a year earlier.

They married in September 2012 in South Carolina and now have three daughters; James, seven, Inez, five, and Betty, two.

Ryan is set to appear in the fly-on-the-wall documentary Welcome to Wrexham, which charts his first steps as a co-owner of a fifth division non-league football team with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ co-creator Rob.

Viewers get to see behind the curtain of their ample FaceTime calls and episode one, entitled Dream, shows the foundations and the romanticism that comes with the story they hope millions will buy into.

In the first two episodes, Reynolds and McElhenney show their nerves at pitching their takeover bid over Zoom to the Wrexham Supporters’ Trust and then the struggles of tracking a must-win game away to Dagenham and Redbridge to get into the end-of-season play-offs.

Humphrey Ker, a writer on McElhenney’s hit show ‘Mythic Quest’, is the man-on-the-ground for the two owners, with the documentary showing how the team strives for promotion at the end of the 2021-22 season.

The first two episodes of Welcome To Wrexham will be released on Disney+ on Thursday August 25. They will be available on FX and Hulu in the USA.