Many Hollywood actors have had to do some pretty dodgy movies or jobs before they “made” it and Ryan Reynolds is no exception. But whereas others did weird ads or dressed in drag, the would-be Deadpool star starred in a 1993 movie where he played a *checks notes* white boy who was raised in India.
Titled Ordinary Magic, the film was based on a novel and is about a young boy who was raised in India by his activist father and is brought up to be an upstanding warrior of social activism.
But when his dad dies, the boy is forced to move in with his aunt in Canada and what ensues is a classic coming-of-age story in which he learns to adjust to his new surroundings and whatnot.
It’s not exactly the easiest film to get a hold of but some generous soul uploaded the entire thing onto YouTube for everyone’s viewing pleasure.
You’d think the filmmakers would’ve cast an experienced film actor for the part but someone in their infinite wisdom thought it was a good idea to cast a 16-year-old newbie named Ryan Reynolds from Canada as a character who is essentially a white teenage Gandhi.
But hey, he must’ve killed his audition because next thing you know we got the future face behind Deadpool making his big film debut as a kid from India.
Now the film isn’t exactly memorable and it barely passes the “watchable” bar but it is fascinating to see a teenage Ryan Reynolds in his first ever film role, mostly because he puts on a horrendously bad Indian accent throughout the whole thing.
There are some interesting elements there you don’t usually see in these kinds of made-for-TV films, such cultural clashes between Ryan’s character and his white classmates and throwing a hunger strike in order to move the plot along, but all in all, Ordinary Magic is just, well, ordinary.
But hey, we all got to start somewhere in our careers and it just so happens that Ryan Reynolds’ journey to being Deadpool involved being a white Indian boy.