Action heroes like Ryan Reynolds wrestle CGI aliens for a living, they dive-bomb LA swimming-pools to the battle cry of ‘Paaar-taaay!’, drink whole oceans of fine wine as if great kingdoms depend on them blowing ten grand in a Manhattan restaurant and being sick on a tramp. On Planet Reynolds nobody can, or would ever want to, understand the life of a surly journalist from Welwyn Garden City. He once married Scarlett Johansson, I enjoy facts about Romans, and can say, ‘This is a bad idea Hans,’ in the fictional language of Shyriiwook Wookiee. We were never going to get on, Ryan Reynolds and I. Ne-ver. Yet here’s the thing. On a tip off, I ask him this one question, and suddenly he’s as flawed, as real, as stupid and human as any of us. “So, Ryan… 

 

…what does it feel like to jump out of a plane, and for your parachute to fail?

Oh man, you heard about that? Ah… yeah. That did happen to me, it was erm, quite terrible. The most alarming bit was actually when I hit the ground and realised I was still alive. That was the point my whole world collapsed, and the panic attack kicked in. I turned my entire jump suit into a toilet. Before that moment it was calm, you know. Weirdly so. I’ve jumped out of the plane, I’m falling to the ground, thinking this is great, this is the best feeling ever, but then I’ve pulled my chord, and, nothing. Not a thing. No shoot. Just me, still pulling at a chord, still nothing happening, still falling to the ground. But I’m calm. At this point I’m still calm.

 

What happens next? You clearly didn’t die…

So I wait a few minutes, a few seconds rather, still falling, and my head just kind of goes off on all these thoughts what to do. Then I remember I have to try and release the reserve shoot, and this might sound odd, but when you’re falling like that you just can’t bring yourself to do it. At least I couldn’t. I’m up there thinking, “When I pull this reserve, and nothing happens, that’s it’s, I’m still alive, but at the same time already dead.” Physically I can’t release that reserve, because I know that when it doesn’t work, I’m history. 

 

That’s kind of silly…

I know. This is what happened though. Eventually it all becomes about surviving, and my body just instinctively does it for me. This little reserve shoot comes out, and I manage to land safely, albeit a few miles or so off target. Then it hits. Just fear and panic. My instructor was trying to get me back up as soon as possible, to get me over it all, and I would have gone the following week, if he hadn’t of then died jumping out of a helicopter. 

 

He died? Seriously?

Yah, seriously. So that was it. The end of my sky diving tenure thank you very much.

 

Wow. Ah, you’re starring in The Green Lantern. Are you nervous about being in such a big budget summer movie?

I’m a little bit nervous. There’s a lot of expectation to deal with on a movie this big. Even my own expectations for this movie are quite hard to deal with. But for the most part the hard work is done, so what can I do? The weird thing about this one is that I completed the whole film and then 75% of the film making process started to happen once I’d gone home. I had just had to sit there being really excited without really knowing just what I was being excited about. To me it was just four green walls, yet to everyone else, I’m on an 3D alien planet. It’s kind of weird you know.

 

Have you ever worn green before? Is it your colour?

I do enjoy green. I’m from British Colombia, the greenest place on earth. 

 

The Green Lantern is really a fanboy hero – have you had anyone threaten you for messing with their comic?

Well, I erh, well, I erh, you know… no. But I can imagine some of their concerns are legitimate. That was always the big thing with this movie, you can’t mess with the expectations of the existing fan base, but at the same time you can’t ignore the larger movie going audience. Around 90% of people who come to see this movie will not have been past fans of The Green Lantern, so we can’t just fill it with what the comic store guys want. Yet at the same time, you have to appease the fan boys because it’s kind of their thing you’re messing with. They kind of own it. It’s a fine line you have to walk when making a movie like this. I think the key is to find out why the fanboys fell in love with it in the first place, and then try to recreate that element if you can.

 

Were you a big fan of the comic?

I didn’t know much about it. I knew the basics of the character, but I wasn’t overly familiar with the whole mythology of it all.

 

You recited the pledge for that little boy at the comic con. Can you still do it? 

Yeah of course, it’s hardly novel length. In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight, let those who worship evil’s might, beware my power Green Lantern’s light.

 

Are you secretly a bit of a geek?

I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that I’m like a cool guy, but I’m no geek either. I’m a pretty normal fella I would say. I don’t know how to play video games, which I guess in a kind of backward way makes me the geek these days. 99% of the population play video games, so suddenly I’m the outsider in this scenario. I guess with geek being the new sheik, if you’re not geeky, you’ve actually become the geek, know what I mean? I’m pretty geeky in my obsession with gadgets too I guess. I recently got my first iPad, and started picking the thing apart, testing it out, trying things out, and then I looked up and realised it was like four days later. I had a beard, I’d lost 3lb, I had nails like Howard Hughes.

 

When you were married you suffered quite a lot under hands of the paparazzi. Has that attention lessened since you’re single? 

For me, it’s not a major problem. I don’t suffer too much because I think I might bore the paparazzi a little. I’m not stumbling out of clubs at 2am, I don’t do a tonne of stuff to attract them, so they don’t find me that interesting to be honest. I have friends who do have that problem, and I definitely don’t envy that. It’s a tough racket.

 

What was the strangest thing you read about yourself?

Adopting a baby from Ghana. Jeez. So I try not to read anything, but when you hear about things like that, you have to kind of read it, so you can address it. It’s tough, because you can drive yourself actual mad. In the end you have to just surrender yourself to it, let these people write their crazy stuff, and just float above. If anything comes up particularly insane, I now have a representative who can help deal with that, you know, set the record straight if need be.

 

You’ve been included in the sexiest man in the world leagues for years. Every year do you worry you won’t be included?

That’s just a silly question. I don’t understand any of it. There’s nothing good that can come of it. These things just provide an incredible amount of ammunition for my brothers to make jokes about me. 

 

What do they make of you having action figures made of your for Green Lantern then?

Oh, those are incredible. I don’t have my own yet, but I was allowed to have a play with some the other day while I wait for my shipment to arrive. I couldn’t believe them, the likeness is remarkably canny. It’s so cool. I’m going to try and get as many as a can. Hundreds. My nieces and nephews are getting them for Christmas whether they want them or not.

 

Can you have a laugh working on such a high budget movie, or is it all very serious?

I’m rarely deadly serious on a set. Unless I’m near mortally injured, I try to mess around for the most part. Nobody there’s carrying cancer, so I think you need to have a bit of a laugh while you’re shooting. It’s good to have that camaraderie with the crew, because you’ve got to spent each and every day for six months in each others pockets. I don’t mean we’re pulling pranks or anything like. You can’t mess with the bosses money too much. It’s more about giving each other a hard time. Calling each other names. The main thing I get popped with is my Canadian accent. People seem to lick to rip that.

 

In the UK we find it really hard to tell the two accents apart…

Well, same here. It’s kind of funny because Americans hear a Canadian accent, where as largely Canadians do not hear an American one. It’s because in Canada we’re so bombarded with American media and entertainment, we’ve just become so conditioned that we don’t hear it. The reverse is obviously not true.

 

Your dad was a Mountie – is it considered as the coolest job ever in Canada?

Ah, I don’t know. My father was a Mountie, and my brother is as well. Was I tempted to be one too? Nope. Never really appealed to me in the slightest to be honest. Definitely not in fact.

 

Did you get any injuries on set?

Yeah I had quite a few, they’re par for the course on a movie like this. I’m still hobbling around with them a little bit. We were shooting this one scene where I separated my shoulder. I don’t even know how it happened, I was hanging from a wire, and then suddenly my shoulder was hanging in a whole different way, without the rest of me. That hurt.

 

You obviously had to get in shape – what was the hardest thing to give up? 

Beer. In fact, couldn’t drink any alcohol at all for a year, and I have to say, I do normally like a glass of wine or a beer at the end of a day’s work. I wasn’t allowed at all, so that sucked. And when I had that first drink after, man, I was definitely a cheap date that night.

 

Did you take anything from the set knowing you could sell in on for a fortune in years to come? 

Well that’s the problem with such a CGI heavy movie, all I was surrounded by were four massive green walls. There was absolutely nothing actually there, it’s all added in post production after. The only thing that was real, and I could steal was the actual ring of the lantern. I stole that. That was pretty cool. They were going to have to pry that out of my cold, dead hand if they thought they were going to get that back.

 

Have you ever worn it out, to the shops or something?

Well no. I don’t go out wearing alien jewellery. That would be ridiculous.