Ryan Reynolds' Career Began (And Nearly Ended) On This Nickelodeon Teen Soap Opera

Long before Ryan Reynolds became a household name thanks to the "Deadpool" movies, he starred in a little-known Canadian teen soap opera. The Nickelodeon show was titled "Hillside" in Canada but was, for some reason, renamed "Fifteen" in the U.S. It followed the lives of a bunch of high schoolers as they dealt with dating, bullying, drugs, and all the topical issues of the time. The 1990s series was attempting to fill the hole left behind by "Degrassi," a TV franchise that had dominated the '80s (and later resurfaced in the 2000s) but, at this point, was on an indefinite hiatus.  

Reynolds appeared in "Fifteen" as Billy Simpson, a teen who starts off struggling with his parents' divorce and goes on a whole troubled journey from there. It's jarring to watch the actor in this show, if only because of how earnest the whole thing is. This was long before Reynolds found his niche as a sarcastic, comedic guy, to the point where it's hard to even recognize him here.

Speaking on "Live" in 2016, Reynolds revealed he "hated it there" and temporarily quit acting after working on the show. "After that, I ended up working at a warehouse, and I worked at a restaurant for two years," he explained before later adding, "I'm glad I did that because I didn't end up like a child actor with some depraved drug addiction."

The actor didn't elaborate on why he hated making the series (I'm assuming the cheesy material had something to do with it), but he did elaborate on the fun part of the job. "I remember we were paid 150 bucks per episode," he remarked, joking that he'd felt like a "gajillionaire" at the time. He also enjoyed the opportunity to simply "get out of the house" every day.

Reynolds' Billy is one of the younger characters on "Fifteen" and is depicted as being sweet and innocent in the first season. Life comes at him fast, however: Due to his troubled home life and many romantic failures, Billy goes on a bully arc before eventually straightening himself out and making amends. It's admirable for a kids show to pull off such a long-term serialized arc like this, as that wasn't common at all in '90s kids television. The problem is that the series' writing and acting are a little too awkward to make the whole thing work.

Although Reynolds said that he didn't like working on the show and briefly quit acting as a result, the timeline's a little hard to make sense of. Multiple outlets have reported that Reynolds was only on the show for the first season, which, if true, would carve out enough time for that two-year break Reynolds said he spent working at a warehouse. However, I went back and watched through the series to find that Reynolds is actually there for the full four seasons. He then went on to film the movie "Ordinary Magic" shortly afterward, prior to working on several projects in a row, the "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" TV movie among them. The thing is, there doesn't seem to be a two-year gap between any of these productions.

While it's possible that Reynolds indeed disliked his time on "Fifteen" and worked at a warehouse afterward, it doesn't appear as though his break from acting was as clean as he remembered it being. This Nickelodeon teen soap opera may have tested his love for acting, but it doesn't seem like it stood any chance of killing it for good.