CINEMA: Ryan Reynolds claims to be mistaken for Ben Affleck all the time.

Ryan Reynolds is cur­rent­ly enjoy­ing his sab­bat­i­cal from film­mak­ing, hav­ing worked tire­less­ly to deliv­er one hit hit after anoth­er over the past decade. Reynolds’ lat­est film, Red Notice, recent­ly became Net­flix’s most-watched film, sur­pass­ing Bird Box and Extrac­tion. Tak­ing advan­tage of his short break from the movies, Ryan Reynolds joined the Dear Hank & John pod­cast with broth­ers John Green (The Fault in our Stars) and vlog­ger Hank Green.

While it’s no secret that Ryan Reynolds is often mis­tak­en for fel­low Cana­di­an Ryan Gosling, there is anoth­er big name celebri­ty Reynolds is min­gling with. When asked on the pod­cast if he was misiden­ti­fied for some­one else, Reynolds shared a fun­ny sto­ry about how he’s always mis­tak­en for Ben Affleck at a New York City piz­za place he fre­quents. . But the Dead­pool star nev­er both­ered to cor­rect them. “There’s a piz­za place in the East Vil­lage of New York that I’ve been going for years. They think I’m Ben Affleck, and I’ve nev­er cor­rect­ed them.”

Reynolds agreed with the hosts that the time to reveal the secret is long gone, and so he’s play­ing the game now. “I don’t think it would go well if I revealed.” Ryan Reynolds fur­ther clar­i­fied that he did not ben­e­fit from the misunderstanding.

And I don’t accept any­thing either, like they don’t give me free piz­za on that basis. I do every­thing nor­mal­ly like every­one else. They just think I’m Ben Affleck and they’ll ask me how J.Lo is doing and I’m like “great, good”. I take the piz­za and leave. What I think makes it so believ­able with them is that I look so slight­ly upset with a celebri­ty once again asked about my life and the movies, and I kind of look like … when I’m leav­ing, I think they’re kind of like, ‘I don’t think Ben Affleck is being amused by us.’

“Yes, I have to be more fru­gal. I have to take care of Ben,” Reynolds added when asked to main­tain Affleck­’s rep­u­ta­tion. It’s con­fus­ing how any­one could mis­take him for Ben Affleck. It’s under­stand­able with Ryan Gosling, how­ev­er. Both are Cana­di­an, both are the same age, and both have some­what sim­i­lar appear­ances. Reynolds also touched on this top­ic, respond­ing to a ques­tion from fans. He referred to an old tweet from him­self, where he cheek­i­ly explained the dif­fer­ence between him­self and the La La Land star.

Years ago I was play­ing fast and free on Twit­ter. These days I’m a lit­tle more reserved. But I remem­ber that a ques­tion like this was raised. He said: I can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling. And I answered the ques­tion. I said — and I would nev­er do that today — but I respond­ed and I said, ‘Well, the dif­fer­ence is easy to spot. Ryan Gosling has blond hair. And Ryan Reynolds is a ***. ’

Well, it’s good to see Reynolds enjoy­ing his act­ing break. Hope­ful­ly it won’t be very long. Dead­pool 3 is in active devel­op­ment at Dis­ney and will like­ly be the first project Reynolds takes on when he returns. We will then see him along­side Will Fer­rell and Octavia Spencer in Spir­it­ed. Direct­ed by Sean Anders and John Mor­ris, Spir­it­ed is a Christ­mas-themed musi­cal com­ing to Apple TV + in 2022.