Recently Exposed Details About Hugh Jackman’s Relationship With Ryan Reynolds Are Turning Heads

Birds of a feather flock together — and it looks like A-list celebrities do, too. But of all high-profile relationships in Hollywood, the longstanding “feud” between Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds takes the cake. The two megastars have never been shy about taking shots at each other, yet the true nature and origins of their connection are far more complicated than they ever let on.

According to the actors themselves, the “bad blood” between them goes back centuries. In fact, the two have even compared their “feud” to that of the Hatfields and McCoys.

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“People think it started with us, but it didn’t. For generations, it’s been a point of family honor to oppose each other,” Jackman joked in an Instagram post. Reynolds agreed: “The Jackmans and Reynolds have been mortal enemies since there have been Jackmans and Reynoldses-es.”

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In reality, their back-and-forth battle first began back in 2009 on the set of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, with Jackman starring in the titular role and Reynolds debuting his original incarnation of Deadpool. Yet their initial jabs weren’t over who had the better abs.

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Instead, they were over a woman — Scarlett Johansson, to be exact. Reynolds was married to the Marvel star at the time, and Jackman, a good friend of Johansson’s, wanted to make sure Reynolds didn’t get any wise ideas.

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“[When] he came on set I was like, ‘Hey, you better be on your best behavior here, pal, because I’m watching,’ and we started ribbing each other that way,” Jackman recalled. It was all in good fun, of course, though in 2015, Reynolds decided to take things a step further.

Dressed in full Deadpool makeup, Reynolds took to Instagram to impersonate Jackman, doing his best Australian accent as he called for fans to jokingly vote him People‘s Sexiest Man Alive. It was a solid shot at his former co-star — Jackman, however, wasn’t going to take the insult lying down.

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A year later, as Reynolds was accepting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Jackman posted an impersonation of his own, complete with an enormous cutout of Reynold’s head. As “Ryan,” Jackman proceeded to downplay “his” accomplishments and even encouraged fans to urinate on his newly received star!

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Not one to be one-upped, Reynolds responded by appearing in character as Deadpool for a PSA about Australia Day, further insulting the actor. “You gave us Wolverine and for that, I can’t forgive you,” he told the Australian public.

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But the pièce de résistance of Reynold’s rebuttal took place on the big screen, when during the final scene of Deadpool he appeared wearing a paper mask of Jackman’s face. With the entire world in the loop, the pair’s back-and-forth had now become a fully fledged feud.

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Things only escalated from there, with the two superstars looking to troll each other at every turn. Reynolds even highjacked Jackman’s interview for his 2016 film Eddie the Eagle just to mess with him.

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Things were no better online, where Reynolds seemed almost relentless in throwing digs at his rival. Beneath this photo of Jackman at the Beijing premiere of 2017’s Logan, Reynolds made sure to give his thoughts: “Pretty sure those are protesters.”

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Jackman, however, could dish it out just as well as he could take it. For Christmas 2018, he seemingly extended an olive branch to Reynolds by inviting him to an ugly sweater party, for which he knew the Deadpool star would go all out.

Unfortunately for Reynolds, he showed up to find it was all just an elaborate prank by Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. “These f****** a******* said it was a sweater party,” he later posted.

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By this point, the Jackman-Reynolds feud was a major tabloid draw, with even fans wanting to get in on the action. But in 2019, the pair decided to come forward with a shocking announcement…

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They were putting their feud on hold! After years of constant jibing, Jackman and Reynolds agreed to team up to make commercials for each other’s personal companies — or, at least that’s what Reynolds believed.

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In a commercials-within-a-commercial bit, Reynolds debuted a professional, genuinely sincere ad for Jackman’s Laughing Man Coffee Company while Jackman insulted Reynolds and then poured out a full bottle of his Aviation Gin in his. The feud was back on!

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Reynolds wasted no time in getting back at Jackman, deciding to hit him where it really hurt. Under a photo Jackman posted of he and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness for their 24th wedding anniversary, Reynolds chimed in by commenting, “Hang in there, Deb.”

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Jackman, of course, responded by having his dog poop on a photo of the Deadpool star. But beneath the years of pettiness, things weren’t all bad between the two.

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Despite never pulling punches, the pair’s “feud” is really just all for laughs, as Jackman and Reynolds are truly the closest of friends in real life. In fact, rumors are even swirling that the two may reunite on the big screen in the near future.

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Until then, Ryan and Hugh will likely continue with their snarky back-and-forth, something they made sure to keep up even as the COVID-19 pandemic took its toll on the world. Yet while quarantine gave both actors plenty of time to think up their next insult, for Hugh, it presented him with a completely different set of challenges.

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In a 2020 virtual interview with Extra, Hugh didn’t hold back in admitting that he and Deborra “have never spent this much time together” over the course of their two-decade-plus relationship. This might sound obvious coming from one of the world’s most in-demand actors, though distance was never really an issue for he and Deborra.

That’s because way back when the two wed in 1996, they made a pact that they would never spend more than two weeks apart at a time. Of course, Hugh was far from the A-list superstar he is today when he and Deborra first met.

Instead, Hugh had zero acting credits to his name, having just graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. His first offer came in the form of a role on Correlli, a 10-part ABC drama series starring none other than his future wife.

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“I get picked up, and Deb is in the front seat of the car. I’ll never forget: she took off her seatbelt and she turned around and put out her hand and took off her sunglasses and said, ‘Hi, I’m Deborra-Lee Furness, nice to meet you,’” Hugh recalled to PEOPLE. “I remember thinking, ‘I like this girl.’”

Six weeks later, Hugh made his move. It wasn’t exactly a fairy tale beginning, though, as it was only after Deborra confronted him about avoiding her for a week that an embarrassed Hugh finally worked up the nerve to ask her out.

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“She said, ‘I noticed you haven’t talked to me in like a week, what’s going on?’ I said, ‘I got a crush on you. I’ll get over it, I’m sorry.’ She goes, ‘Oh? Because I’ve got a crush on you too,’ Hugh revealed. “I never in a million years thought she reciprocated.”

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Within two weeks of dating, Hugh knew that he and Deborra were destined to spend the rest of their lives together — Deb, on the other hand, needed a bit more convincing. In fact, she even tried to call things off before Hugh’s big heart got the best of her.

“She kind of [broke up with me], a little bit. Early on, three weeks in. I managed to talk her out of it, thank God,” he admitted on the Aussies in Hollywood podcast. “I just knew 100 percent, I even knew when she was trying to work out reasons to break up with me.”

Sure enough, he was right, and just four weeks later the two were engaged to be wed. Hugh credits this timing as one of the reasons their marriage was built to last, as he and Deborra had time to establish a foundation before he landed his breakout role as Wolverine in 2000’s X-Men.

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“I really think it helps that we were together before any of that, so we’ve been on this unbelievable journey, places we never thought we’d go to and we’ve done it together,” the actor shared with Hello! magazine.

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Along with this solid base and their two-week-apart agreement, Hugh and Deborra also set a number of other marriage rules on their wedding night. Not going to bed angry was one of the big ones, though Hugh believed keeping things honest was right up there as well.

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“I think [in] relationships, you gotta be yourself, even the bits you don’t love, the bits you’re embarrassed about or things you did wrong,” he explained. “If you’re in a situation where you can be yourself and really be honest, that’s a good start.”

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But perhaps the most important rule of all pertains to another pact the couple made. In the early days of their marriage, Hugh and Deborra swore to one another that when things got rough, they’d approach every difficulty in life with their relationship as their top priority.

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“Before we had kids, Deb and I made a pretty simple but powerful choice to look each other in the eye at every crossroads in life,” he shared in an excerpt from WHO magazine. “Those crossroads are sometimes big, sometimes they’re small, sometimes you don’t even realise they’re crossroads until you look back.”

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“But at those moments,” he continued, “we said we’d ask each other, ‘Is this good or bad for our marriage?’ Or, now that we’ve got kids, ‘Is this good or bad for our family?’ And as often as possible, we do the thing that is good for our family.”

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Yet the best decisions for their marriage and family haven’t always been the easiest ones. In fact, Hugh’s critically acclaimed role in the Royal National Theatre’s 1998 production of Oklahoma! actually came at the expense of Deborra’s admission into the prestigious directing school at the Victorian College of the Arts.

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Hugh, however, has been more than willing to reciprocate his wife’s sacrifices, revealing that he and Deborra don’t work at the same time so that “one of us is always there to support the other.” Fortunately, the year 2020 ensured that neither of them would have to sacrifice — at least, for a while anyway.

Charley Gallay

When the global COVID-19 pandemic hit, Hugh and Deborra, like most of the rest of the world, were forced to take a break from their busy schedules and quarantine at home for months at a time. Most couples would’ve gone crazy being together for so long, yet for Hugh and Deborra, it was the exact opposite.

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“We were just saying the other day — we have never spent this much time together,” Hugh told Extra. “But having this time without either of us working, being with the family … we’ve had this opportunity to be together, and the results are in: closer.”

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The couple even celebrated their 24th wedding anniversary in quarantine, a fact Hugh’s longtime frenemy Ryan Reynolds acknowledged by commenting “Hang in there, Deb” on Hugh’s celebratory Instagram post. The jibe was obviously made in good fun, though the Deadpool star does know a few things about relationships himself.

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Reynolds and his wife Blake Lively have been an absolute power couple since they began their romance in 2011. Or, at least, 2011 is when they officially began their romance. They met before that under interesting circumstances.

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The superhero movie Green Lantern brought these two delightful and exceptionally good looking individuals together in 2010. When they met on-set, Reynolds was in the process of finalizing his divorce to superstar Scarlett Johansson. The moment Reynolds met Lively, all bets were off.

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When the split was finalized, Lively and Reynolds made their first appearance together in 2011. However fond of public affection they seem on the red carpet, both of these stars were actually quite private about their lives.

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Evidence of this first appeared with the couple’s 2012 nuptials. The ceremony was low key and private. After that, the newlyweds settled into a $2 million dollar mansion in upstate New York. It was reported they were “nesting.”

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After two years of happily wedded bliss, they got news that Lively was pregnant with their first child. This big life event continued their tradition of keeping their private lives, well, private. Though Lively was happy to share her thoughts on becoming a mother.

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She joked with Allure magazine saying, “I would have 30 kids if I could.” Lively is one of five kids, so her desire to have a big family made perfect sense. Even with kids, the couple would prove to be less than traditional.

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The thing is, the couple kept the birth of their first child a secret. It wouldn’t be until weeks after the birth that the public would learn baby Reynolds had arrived safely into the world, brandishing a very unique name.

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They named their first daughter James after Reynold’s late father. Lively explained that she had loved having a boy name and was happy to continue that tradition with her daughter. By his own admission, fatherhood changed Reynolds significantly.

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In an interview with David Letterman in 2015, Reynolds got real about being a dad. “When we had that baby, I fell more in love with my wife than I’d ever been in my entire life. I couldn’t even believe it,” he gushed.

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He spoke of his daughter with his signature humor to compare his love for his wife to his love for baby James, saying “I knew in that exact moment that if we were ever under attack, I would use my wife as a human shield to protect that baby.”

They clearly shared the same tongue-in-cheek humor. When Lively dedicated an Instagram post to him for father’s day, she said, “Since the day our baby was born, I’ve felt so strongly in my heart that you were most likely the father.”

With all the success of baby number one, the pair signed on for a sequel. In 2016, baby girl Inez made her entrance. Shortly after, the family of four attended Reynolds’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star dedication. It was clear who stole the show.

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Toddler James fearlessly grabbed the mic from her father and entertained the crowd. When he managed to get it back, Reynolds expressed his love for Lively and couldn’t help himself but to comment on his parenting style.

“You’ve made me the father of my dreams when I thought I only had ‘fun uncle’ potential,” he quipped to his wife. It is clear James had star potential, but the couple has some serious reservations about her going into show business just yet.

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In 2019, Reynolds revealed that James wants to be an actor. “Yep. I’m fine if she wants to be an actor. Go ahead. You know, in school, do after school stuff like that. That’s all fine,” he said. But, he doesn’t plan on her being a child star.

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“Being a child actor in movies and stuff, that’s a whole other ball of wax,” Reynolds continued. “That’s a huge burden on your nervous system. I mean, having to process all of that attention and information.” He went on to make another crude joke.

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“What’s cheaper and easier is let’s just skip showbiz and enroll you right into cocaine,” he laughed. All jokes aside, their intentions are honest in protecting their children. They prefer that their children grow up outside the spotlight.

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“We want our kids to have the same normal life that we had. We don’t ever want to rob them of what we had, because we’d feel really selfish,” Lively explained to Marie Clare. In 2019, news of baby number three became evident based on Lively’s bump.

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Number three was born later in 2019, but her name remains a secret. The gender was confirmed by Reynolds when he said, “I kind of like my life. I’m really sort of into my children, which I know isn’t popular to say. It’s hard, three girls.”

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The actors schedule their busy careers very carefully. “The kids stay with us, the family stays together, and that is where home is. So if we are in Spain or New York, as long as we are together, we’re home.”

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Adjusting to life with kids is huge, and every parent — celeb or otherwise — has to figure out their own way. Lively once expressed on social media that living with her kids’ mood swings was similar to spending time with a substance abuser.

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