For actors who have spent years in the spotlight, the boundary between the person and the performer can become increasingly difficult to define. Fame creates an image that audiences recognize instantly, while years of work can make that image feel inseparable from the person behind it.

Yet the roles people play are only one part of the lives they build away from cameras, premieres, and press tours. For some, that distinction becomes clearer with age; for others, the two identities gradually begin to overlap in unexpected ways.

During a recent conversation, Ryan Reynolds reflected on that very idea. And his answer offered a glimpse into how he now understands the person beyond the actor.

While promoting Mayday, host Kevin McCarthy asked Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh about the line between their professional identities and their lives outside their work on On Film… With Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy shared how his wife asked him about who is he outside of movies, as in outside of reviewing them.

He extended the same question to Reynolds, where he admitted that the distinction between how the world sees you and how you see yourself can be difficult to reconcile when you are younger. But, he explained, that changes once you become more comfortable with your own identity.

 “I don’t think of myself as just an actor,” he said. “I think of myself as a storyteller,” he said.

For Reynolds, storytelling extends beyond filmmaking into fatherhood, business and even his involvement with Welsh football. He then turned the observation toward Branagh, praising the actor-filmmaker for a career that refuses to fit neatly into a single category On Film… With Kevin McCarthy.

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The conversation came as Reynolds and Branagh were promoting Mayday, their new action-comedy set during the Cold War.

Directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the film stars Ryan Reynolds as US. Navy fighter pilot Troy “Assassin” Kelly, who crash-lands in Soviet Russia during a covert mission. There, he encounters Branagh’s eccentric former KGB agent Nikolai Ustinov, who becomes an unlikely ally.

The film leans into the contrasting energies of its two stars, mixing action, comedy and 1980s nostalgia while placing Reynolds’ wisecracking persona alongside Branagh’s more theatrical presence. Mayday began streaming on Apple TV on September 4, 2026, giving audiences a chance to see the pair share the screen in a Cold War adventure that doubles as an unlikely buddy comedy.

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