Ryan Reynolds recounts being hit by drunk driver in harrowing crash that put him in the hospital for a month

Key Points

• Ryan Reynolds is looking back on being hit by a drunk driver while walking through Vancouver at 18.

• Reynolds “spent four weeks in the hospital” after the collision “broke every bone in my left side,” he recently told Rob Mac.

• The Deadpool star gave a shout-out to the doctor “for putting me back together.”

Ryan Reynolds survived tragedy and lives to tell the tale.

The story of sustaining gruesome injuries after being hit by a drunk driver isn’t one that Reynolds has told often, though it happened over 30 years ago. But during an interview with Rob Mac for GQ published Tuesday, the Deadpool star walked back down memory lane to one of the darker spots in his past.

“I got run over by a drunk driver after making a firmly positive and wise decision for a young, 18-year-old male. Spent four weeks in the hospital,” Reynolds said.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard that!” Reynold’s friend and Wrexham AFC co-owner exclaimed.

“Oh yeah, broke every bone in my left side,” Reynolds continued. “He hit me so hard, his car was not operational.”

He jokingly added, “I’d like to thank Dr. Meek at the General Hospital for putting me back together so kindly. Socialized medicine, he couldn’t say no.”

The accident occurred in the Canadian’s hometown of Vancouver. By the time of the crash, he’d appeared on a season of the teen drama Hillside (also known as Fifteen) and the fantasy series The Odyssey. But his career was still very much in its infancy, before the big break of 2002’s Van Wilder.

Reynolds identified his age at the time of the crash as 19 in a 2019 interview, explaining in a brief aside, “I was 19 in Vancouver, Canada — drinking age is different there — and I’d had a couple of drinks and I didn’t want to get in my car, obviously, because that’s insane. I walked home, and on my way home, I got hit by a drunk driver. I was like, ‘Thanks karma!'”

Ryan Reynolds and T. Money Holmes in ‘Van Wilder’
Credit: Myriad Pictures

Reynolds and Mac’s friendship goes back years, which added to the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star’s shock when he heard Reynolds’ tale.

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Around the time of the release of 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, Reynolds admitted that he planned for Mac to cameo in the film, and even shot the scene in question. But it ended up on the cutting room floor.

“Rob very kindly did a cameo in [Deadpool & Wolverine], which will hopefully live on in the digital extras,” he said at the time. “While editing a movie, they say you ‘sometimes have to kill your darlings.’ And with a heavy heart (and through great outside intervention) I had to kill a darling with this cameo.”

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