The Man Who Ordered 32 Pizzas for a Movie and Called It Work

There is a pizza place in New York’s East Village that Ryan Reynolds has been quietly visiting for years. The staff there is convinced he is Ben Affleck. And Reynolds has never once corrected them.

He just answers their questions about Jennifer Lopez, takes his pizza, and leaves.

A Long-Running Scam He Did Not Even Plan

The whole saga came out when Reynolds appeared on the Dear Hank and John podcast, where he casually admitted he had been maintaining an accidental celebrity identity for years at his local pizza joint. “They believe I’m Ben Affleck and I’ve never corrected them,” he said. “I feel like it would not go over well if I revealed.”

The restaurant never gives him free food. He pays like everyone else, answers their questions about Ben’s life with a cheerful “great,” and walks out. His one regret? That he comes across as slightly too sullen to be believable. “When I leave, I think they sort of think, ‘I don’t think Ben Affleck is amused by us,'” he told the podcast. “I gotta be more chipper. I gotta take care of Ben.”

The Man Behind the Deadpool Diet

When Reynolds is not pulling off low-stakes pizza heists, he is eating with considerable discipline. His longtime trainer Don Saladino credits much of his transformation to something surprisingly simple: carbohydrates.

Saladino told Esquire that when they introduced carbs properly, Reynolds’s physique changed completely. Sweet potatoes became a staple. Oatmeal in the morning. Brown rice with his meals. His body, Saladino said, became the best it had ever been.

Reynolds himself told Men’s Health that he simply eats “clean, whole foods” every two to three hours when preparing for a role. No dramatic protocols. No secret powders. Just consistent, boring, working food eaten on a schedule.

His One Non-Negotiable Cheat

All that discipline leads to one sacred reward: Patsy’s Pizza in East Harlem, which Reynolds has declared, with full conviction, the best pizza on the whole planet. The restaurant has been firing up its coal ovens since 1933, and Reynolds makes no apologies for the devotion.

His defense of the cheat meal is, predictably, disarming. He told Men’s Health: “Is it really unhealthy if it makes you so happy?” A question that philosophers and nutritionists have been arguing about for centuries, and which Reynolds appears to have settled for himself.

The 32 Pizzas He Called Props

Before Patsy’s became his Harlem sanctuary, Reynolds had a long-standing relationship with pizza back in his hometown of Vancouver.

Nat’s New York Pizzeria on West Broadway was where a teenage Reynolds used to hang out before he was famous, according to The Province. The owners knew him as a regular kid who came in and chatted.

Then, years later, when Reynolds was filming ‘Deadpool’ in Vancouver, his team called Nat’s and placed an order for 32 large pizzas. For props.

The owner told The Province he was moved by the gesture, not just for the business, but for the thought behind it. Reynolds had remembered the place from his youth and made sure they got the call. “It was the personal touch,” the owner said.

The Kitchen Confession

For all his food enthusiasm, Reynolds freely admits he should never be trusted near a stove. When asked about his cooking abilities in a Men’s Health cover story, he assessed his own skills with characteristic precision: “I am not innovative in the kitchen.

The firemen will kick down our door, take my wife away, and give her a better life.”

He also noted that if he could be stranded on a desert island with any celebrity, he would choose Stanley Tucci, specifically because Tucci is “resourceful, funny, and can cook.” Ryan Reynolds, a man who understands both his strengths and his limits.

He also owns Aviation Gin, a business he pursued after tasting it for the first time and deciding immediately he needed to be involved. Which, combined with his Patsy’s devotion, his Vancouver pizza loyalty, and his ongoing career as an accidental Ben Affleck impersonator, paints a fairly complete picture of a man who takes his food seriously and almost nothing else.