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Ryan Reynolds talked about the “paradox” of being a people-pleaser in Hollywood during a John Candy: I Like Me event in New York City on Wednesday, Oct. 8
“Being a people-pleaser is, quite literally, antithetical to having a mental-health crisis or issue,” said the actor, who co-produced the documentary
Reynolds previously told PEOPLE while discussing the challenges of his own people-pleasing tendencies, “You never want to be a problem for anybody else”
Ryan Reynolds is reflecting on the “paradox” of people-pleasing and mental health.
During a John Candy: I Like Me event in Brooklyn, New York, on Wednesday, Oct. 8, the 48-year-old actor recalled a “profound” musing he once heard from Conan O’Brien.
“He talks about people-pleasing and pleasers in Hollywood,” Reynolds told the audience. “And Bill Murray says it too. You just can’t — it doesn’t work.”
“And what I found really fascinating about that is … being a people-pleaser is, quite literally, antithetical to having a mental-health crisis or issue,” he continued.
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Ryan Reynolds in Toronto on Sept. 4, 2025
The actor’s reasoning? “Because as a people-pleaser, you don’t want to burden anyone with your anything,” Reynolds said.
He went on to explain that “the only way out is through” if you’re “somebody who’s in a mental-health foxhole and trying to get themselves out.”
“The only way out is to center yourself, and to the people-pleaser that’s [difficult]. So it’s a paradox that is fascinating to me,” Reynolds added.
The Deadpool & Wolverine star co-produced John Candy: I Like Me, a documentary about the late actor and comedian that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 4.
It features “never-before-seen home videos, intimate access to his family, and candid recollections from collaborators to paint a bigger picture of one of the brightest stars of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s,” per a synopsis.
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John Candy in Los Angeles in 1990; Ryan Reynolds in New York City on Sept. 17, 2024
While visiting the PEOPLE/EW and Shutterstock studio at TIFF, Reynolds said he had known Candy had been coping with anxiety prior to his death in 1994 at age 43. But “I didn’t need anyone to tell me that he did,” he said while sitting next Colin Hanks, who directed the film.
“I know I have some of those traits, and people-pleasing and mental health, they don’t coexist very well together at all, because you never want to burden anybody else with anything. You never want to be a problem for anybody else,” Reynolds says.
The actor went on to say that “the only way to kind of push back at” mental-health struggles “is to talk about it — is to sort of take the stage or take the space and own it and hold it and go, ‘Hey, I’m having a tough time and I need help.’ “
“And that’s tough for a people-pleaser to do. It’s really, really hard actually,” Reynolds added. “So I feel for that guy struggling through that for so long at a period where it was just starting to be acceptable to talk about it a little bit more.”
John Candy: I Like Me is on Prime Video Oct. 10.
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