The Time He Offered $5000 for the Return of a Stolen Teddy Bear

In July of 2020 some desperate person stole the wrong backpack in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mara Soriano, who was in the process of moving, set her bag down, distracted. Someone took advantage of the opportunity to steal the bag, which contained an iPad, a checkbook, and her residency card.

But as far as Soriano was concerned, none of that mattered. The only thing in her bag that wasn’t replaceable was a custom teddy bear from Build-A-Bear that contained a recording of her late mother’s voice with the message to Mara: “I love you I’m proud of you, I’ll always be with you.” Soriano’s mother died last year.

While we can all say what a sad, sweet story that is, and hope that the thief has enough of a conscience to return the bear, Ryan Reynolds—a Vancouver native—put his money where his mouth is, offering a $5,000 reward for the bear’s return. See what I mean? He must be hiding something. Consider, for instance…

The Time He Ran a Marathon to Support Parkinson’s Research

Ryan Reynolds saw his father deal with the effects of Parkinson’s Disease for decades before his passing in 2015. As a result, Reynolds has a personal investment in research for a cure. As a result, he sits on the board of directors for the Michael J. Fox Foundation. But what does that even mean?

Plenty of celebrities sit on boards for various organizations without really doing much. Has Ryan Reynolds actually done anything to represent a real commitment to the cause? Has he sacrificed? Has he put his body on the line? Does running a distance immortalized for killing a man count?

In 2008, Reynolds ran in the New York City Marathon to raise money for Parkinson’s research. As he put it at the time, he joined “thousands of other men and women to march in lockstep solidarity toward searing psychic pain and physical humilation.” He finished in under four hours, which is about three hours longer than it would take me to “finish” a marathon by quitting half a mile in.

Surely someone has the dirt on this guy. Maybe one of his exes…

The Time Alannis Morisette Wrote a Song About How Perfect He Is

No one can see through to a person’s darkness and flaws like an ex. And before Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively met on the set of Green Lantern (the only good thing to come out of that movie), Ryan spent three years engaged to singer-songwriter and fellow Canadian Alanis Morisette.

So she must know his twisted secret. She must have seen the cruelty and vice that he hides behind a thick layer of charm. All we need to do is look at the lyrics of “Torch,” the song she wrote about their breakup to get the juicy Taylor-Swiftesque gossip:

I miss your smell and your style and your pure abiding wayMiss your approach to life and your body in my bedMiss your take on anything and the music you would playMiss cracking up and wrestling and our debriefs at end of day

The rest of the song goes on like that, with Morisette listing Reynolds’ every attribute as the things that she misses. She describes the feeling after their break up as “raw despondence,” and yet the two are reportedly still friends.

Reynolds also seems to be on good terms with ex-wife Scarlett Johansson. At the time of their divorce the couple said, “We entered our relationship with love and it’s with love and kindness we leave it.” Which can only mean… that even his exes never saw Reynolds’ horrific true self. Because there’s no way he’s this perfect. He’s not an actual superhero…

The Time He Saved His Nephew’s Life

Okay, there aren’t a lot of details on this one. We pretty much have to take Reynolds at his word that, at some point, he used his CPR training to save his nephew’s life. Reynolds reported the brief summary of the story when he was taking a refresher course to learn CPR techniques specific to children and infants.

Presumably he wants to be able to save his daughters if anything ever happens to them, and is using his real-life example to remind others of the importance of this skill. Either that, or he’s pretending to be a good father and a heroic uncle to distract us from his dark secret. A smokescreen, just like all his charitable work. Like…

The Time He Used Deadpool to Say “**** Cancer”

Reynolds’ most famous role is of course as the foul-mouthed, immortal meta-mercenary Wade Wilson—AKA Deadpool—who is not exactly the most kid-friendly superhero, as Reynolds himself is quick to point out. But it was also a passion project for Reynolds, who has been a huge Deadpool nerd for years. So when fellow Deadpool fanboy, 13-year old Connor McGrath, reached out through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Reynolds met with him, and arranged a viewing of an early cut of Deadpool.

Maybe 13 is a bit borderline for a movie as gory and vulgar as Deadpool, but Connor McGrath was already a huge fan of the comics, and connected his own cancer fight with the character of Wade Wilson—who is riddled with tumors. And, as Reynolds put it, “Connor was 13. But this kid… He was smart. He was funny. And not just funny ‘for a kid’ – or funny ‘for a person battling something awful’. He was unqualified funny. He had that… thing. That thing you see in great performers or comedy writers. A running commentary/observational skill people are just lucky to be born with.”

The two stayed in touch, even giving each other nicknames, and Reynolds went back to visit him weeks later, as Connor’s condition sadly worsened. Since Connor’s passing in 2016, Reynolds has launched his “F Cancer” campaign, raising money for cancer research through a series of events. But honestly, it sounds like Reynolds had as much fun hanging out with Connor McGrath as Connor had with him, so is that even charity? It’s not like it cost him anything…

The Time He And Blake Lively Donated $1 Million to Food Banks

Okay, a million dollars in donations to food banks in the U.S. and Canada during the lockdown is pretty good… and so is donating 30% of Aviation Gin sales to out-of-work bartenders… and so is giving out memorabilia to people donating critical PPE to healthcare workers… It’s almost starting to seem like he really cares about people…

The Time He Gave a Commencement Speech Advocating for Empathy

Okay, so, a lot of celebrities gave virtual commencement speeches for all the social-distancing graduations going on earlier this summer. In many ways Ryan Reynolds’ speech to the seniors at his old high school in Vancouver was no different—just a bit more charming.

He makes some inside jokes about one of their teachers and pokes fun at himself for being kicked out of another school. He pays for pizza for the whole class at a local spot, and points them all to David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water” commencement speech as “a real commencement speech.” But then Reynolds goes on to give them some really solid life advice.

He told the graduating seniors of Kitsilano Secondary school to “practice some form of compassion,” explaining how divisions among people are often used to maintain the status quo of power and conquest, which is—in Reynold’s words—”getting really ****ing boring.”

In his mind, the antidote to that is to “practice empathy,” which not only has the moral value of eroding those divisions in order to unite people, it’s also the practice to which he attributes much of his success, as well as his happiness. He also acknowledges that the practice is not a binary—it’s not something you turn on and then forget about. He says that, “it’s something that I’ll probably be working on my whole life.”

That’s exactly the lesson that so many teenagers need to hear as they take the next steps in their lives, and it must have been a bit strange to receive that message from a star as big as Ryan Reynolds. But he really just seems to be the kind of person who cares about others… Unless…