Ryan Reynolds recently revealed that his approach to portraying a pilot on the big screen is not too different from Tom Cruise’s. The 49-year-old actor has flown planes, especially fighter planes, in a couple of movies in the past.
In his conversation with PEOPLE, Reynolds recently revealed that he does not feel very comfortable playing a pilot.
“I don’t have a tremendous amount of faith in me as a pilot,” he admitted, adding, “I also don’t have a lot of curiosity. I’ve played a number of fighter pilots, but I don’t know why, I just have.”
The interesting revelation comes ahead of his upcoming action-comedy movie release, Mayday. The veteran Canadian-American actor is playing a U.S. Navy Fighter pilot. The film is set to release on September 4 on Apple TV.
While Cruise is famously known for earning his pilot’s license, flying his own vintage aircraft, and personally performing real aerial stunts for films like Top Gun: Maverick, Reynolds is more than happy to leave flying to the pros.
Why Ryan Reynolds prefers leaving the flying to real pilots
The reason why Reynolds doesn’t prefer flying planes himself and leaving it for the real pilots is actually funny. And it gets even funnier given his role in his latest movie directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (Game Night, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves).
In the film, Reynolds stars as Troy “Assassin” Kelly, a cocky 1987 U.S. Navy fighter pilot who is shot down deep behind Soviet lines. Because the film mostly takes place around the 1980s era of aviation craze, the filmmakers actually went straight to Cruise himself to incorporate Top Gun into their story.
“We needed to have the cooperation from Tom Cruise. Yeah. Uh, and, and fortunately, we did,” Daley revealed to PEOPLE. He also mentioned that Cruise personally approved the use of footage from the 1986 classic.
Even with Maverick’s official blessing and plenty of aerial action on his resume, Reynolds remains firmly grounded, and he wants no part of a real flying pilot experience.
