Ryan Reynolds in a coffin for 95 minutes? Sounds like a setup for a Deadpool joke—but Buried was no laughing matter. Back in 2010, the Hollywood funnyman faced one of his darkest fears—claustrophobia—in a role that left him gasping for air, literally and emotionally.
The thriller Buried, directed by Rodrigo Cortés, dropped Reynolds into a wooden coffin as Paul Conroy, an American truck driver in Iraq who wakes up buried alive. Armed with just a lighter, a cell phone, and some profound desperation, Paul tries to outsmart his captors and find a way out. Now, imagine shooting all that inside an actual coffin. Reynolds didn’t just act; he endured.
“Claustrophobia is a primal fear that exists within everybody. For me, I was enclosed in there and had moments of utter panic,” Ryan Reynolds admitted to The Standard. Panic attacks weren’t in the script but became part of the process. A microphone strapped to his chest caught every frantic heartbeat. And when he couldn’t easily get out of the coffin between takes? He just had to stay there. With 60 pounds of wood pressing down, it was less Hollywood glamour and more of a situation where he needed help to breathe.
This was no ordinary gig for the wisecracking Deadpool star, who’s more used to dodging explosions and tossing zingers. But Reynolds’ struggles with anxiety go way deeper than one claustrophobic shoot. “I’ve always had anxiety,” he shared in an interview, revealing how he’s battled both the light and dark sides of it for most of his life.
In his 20s, Reynolds went through what he called a “real unhinged phase,” trying to party away his stress and, as he put it, “make himself vanish in some way.” Growing up with a tough-as-nails dad, Jim Reynolds, didn’t help. Reynolds described his father as the “stress dispensary” of their household, a dynamic that turned young Ryan into a “skin-covered micro manager.” Talk about carrying emotional baggage.
But leave it to Reynolds to turn life’s challenges into his ultimate flex. Enter Deadpool, his self-proclaimed “knucklehead” alter ego. Slipping into the Merc with a Mouth’s persona gave him a quirky way to cope. “When the curtain opens, I turn on this knucklehead, and he kind of takes over,” he said. It’s part therapy, part performance art—and 100% Reynolds.
Still, Buried stands out as one of his rawest, most vulnerable performances. No green screens, no mutants, just a man, a box, and his will to survive. It wasn’t flashy or funny but it proved that Reynolds could deliver tension and grit like a pro.
Fourteen years later, Buried remains a stark reminder: behind the laughs and superhero antics, Reynolds is a guy who conquered not just his roles but his fears. The next time you see Deadpool cracking-wise, remember that he once had to keep his cool in a coffin. That’s some real-life superhero stuff right there.
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