Ryan Reynolds is still uncovering surprises about his wife, Blake Lively. Recently, the actress revealed her new hair care line, Blake Brown, which led to an unexpected revelation for Reynolds: her real last name.
In a heartfelt Instagram Story, Reynolds, 47, expressed his admiration for Lively’s dedication to her brand. “I’m obscenely proud of this woman. She’s been working on @blakebrownbeauty for 7 years,” he wrote. “And the result is exactly what you’d expect of a hyper-obsessive, detail-addicted, uncompromising quality control genius. Also, I just found out her last name is Brown.”
At a New York City event on July 31, celebrating the launch of her hair care line, Lively, 36, shared the backstory behind her name. “Brown is my dad’s name. My dad took Lively from my mom, which is her story to tell. It’s a longer, much more interesting story. But I just thought that was really cool. My mom had three kids and he was like, ‘I’m not going to take their name from them, I’m not going to make them take my name. I’ll just take their name.’ That was before I was born, well before I was born,” Lively explained.
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She added, “My dad took on Lively and I’ve only ever been called Blake Lively, but Blake Brown was on my birth certificate and then would show up in legal documents here and there. It was always kind of like an identity I never fully stepped into, yet it was the most intimate identity of mine because it’s like the most personal name.”
The star also emphasized the personal significance of her new venture, stating, “It was important to me to put my name on this brand because I worked so hard on it and it is so personal to me.”
Lively’s father, actor Ernie Lively, passed away in 2021. He appeared alongside Lively in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
The couple, married since 2012 and parents to four children, continue to support each other’s careers. Recently, Reynolds’ film Deadpool & Wolverine premiered, and Lively took to Instagram on July 26 to reflect on Reynolds’ early pitch about the Deadpool character from their 2011 film The Green Lantern. “It was a ‘meta’ superhero,” she wrote. “Most of us didn’t know what exactly meta meant back then. Except [Taika Waititi] bc he’s always been more brilliant than the rest of us mortals. We understood in theory, but how it would come together for an audience was murky, for everyone but [Reynolds].”
