Ryan Reynolds Reveals He Was “Run Over by a Drunk Driver” at 18, and the Story Behind It Will Leave You In Awe of Him

Before Ryan Reynolds was slinging katanas as Deadpool or trading banter with Hugh Jackman, he was an 18-year-old kid in Vancouver who did exactly the right thing after a night out, and it still nearly ended his life.

In a new interview that started out as a goofy IKEA-building segment, Reynolds dropped one of the most jaw-dropping personal stories of his career, and his Wrexham AFC co-owner Rob McElhenney clearly had no idea it was coming.

A Responsible Decision, an Awful Outcome

Let’s set the scene, because the setup here is genuinely sweet before it takes a hard turn.

Ryan Reynolds described the night in question, recalling, “You know, when I was 18, I left a bar, and I’d had a beer, you know, and I walked back and I looked at my car for a second. I thought you know what, I’m not gonna drive anywhere. Even if it’s four blocks home, absolutely not.”

That is, by every possible measure, the textbook “correct” decision. Had a drink, did not want to risk driving, chose to walk instead.

The kind of choice that public service announcements are built around. Except in Reynolds’ case, making the responsible choice did not protect him the way it should have.

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

And the injuries were not minor. “He hit me so hard, his car was not operational,” Reynolds explained, after revealing that the crash “broke every bone in my left side.” When asked to sum up the experience, Reynolds put it plainly: “Yeah, very bad.”

Just sit with that for a second. An 18-year-old does everything right, leaves his car behind, walks home on foot, and still ends up hospitalized for a month with every bone on one side of his body broken, because someone else made the choice to get behind the wheel after drinking.

It is a stark reminder that doing the right thing personally does not make you immune to the consequences of someone else’s bad decision.

Rob McElhenney’s Reaction Says It All

Here is where the story takes a slightly lighter turn, even if the subject matter stays heavy. Reynolds shared all of this while filming a lighthearted video for GQ alongside his friend and Wrexham AFC co-owner Rob McElhenney.

The pair spent the segment attempting to assemble IKEA furniture, which led to plenty of laughs before the conversation took an unexpectedly serious turn.

GQ even teased the interview on social media with the caption, “new Ryan Reynolds lore just dropped 👀”, which, in hindsight, might be the understatement of the week.

McElhenney’s reaction to hearing the story was about as genuine as it gets. “That’s the first time I’ve heard that!” the “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” star exclaimed, clearly caught off guard.

He followed up with, “What? How am I not hearing that?” which, frankly, is the exact reaction most people are having while reading this, too.

What makes the moment land even harder is the contrast. Here are two friends, mid-conversation, surrounded by flat-pack furniture and Allen wrenches, and suddenly one of them casually reveals he was hit so hard by a drunk driver that the other car was totaled, and he spent a month in the hospital.

Despite the seriousness of it all, Reynolds maintained his trademark sense of humor throughout the exchange, somehow managing to make even this story feel like classic Ryan Reynolds.

And true to form, he did not end the story on the injuries. He ended it with a thank-you. “I’d like to thank Dr. Meek at the General Hospital for putting me back together so kindly,” Reynolds said, before joking, “Socialized medicine, he couldn’t say no.” The hospital in question was General Hospital in Vancouver, Reynolds’ hometown.

This Isn’t the First Time, But It’s the Most Detailed Telling Yet

If parts of this story sound vaguely familiar, that is because Reynolds has actually touched on this accident before, just never in quite this much detail.

The story of sustaining these injuries is not one Reynolds has told often, even though it happened more than 30 years ago.

Back in a 2019 interview, Reynolds gave a slightly different version of events, recalling, “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!’” Interestingly, that earlier interview gave a different age for when the accident happened, with Entertainment Weekly noting the discrepancy.

Whether Reynolds was 18 or 19 at the time, the broader strokes of the story, the responsible decision, the drunk driver, the lengthy hospital stay, have remained consistent across both tellings.

What is new this time around is the sheer specificity. The four weeks in the hospital, every bone on his left side, the car that was left undrivable, and the heartfelt shoutout to the doctor who treated him.

These are details that paint a much fuller, and frankly, much more harrowing picture than the shorthand version Reynolds gave years ago.

It is also worth pointing out the bigger picture here. Reynolds went on to build one of the most physically demanding careers in modern Hollywood, headlining the Deadpool franchise, a role built almost entirely around stunts, fight choreography, and over-the-top physical comedy.

Knowing that the man underneath that suit once had every bone on one side of his body broken as a teenager adds a whole new layer to just how much resilience that career has actually required.

This story also lands as a powerful, if unintentional, reminder about the ripple effects of drunk driving. Reynolds did everything society asks of someone who has had a drink; he left his car behind and chose to walk.

And it still was not enough to keep him safe, because the danger was never about his own choices. It was about someone else’s.

Reynolds has spent years using humor to talk about hard things, from his openness about anxiety to his self-deprecating jokes about aging in Hollywood.

This latest story fits that pattern, a genuinely frightening piece of his personal history, delivered with just enough wit to make it digestible, but not so much that the weight of it gets lost entirely.

Sometimes the funniest people really have been through the toughest stuff, and Reynolds’ offhand revelation, sandwiched between jokes about IKEA instructions and Canadian healthcare, is proof of exactly that.