Why Ryan Reynolds Says He 'Let Go of Getting Paid' for First Deadpool Movie

Ryan Reynolds put it all on the line for Deadpool.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, the actor, 47, talked about the sacrifices he made to get the first Deadpool movie made —including letting go of "getting paid."

"When I finally got to make it, it had been almost 10 years at that point," Reynolds, who plays the title character, said of the 2016 movie. "No part of me was thinking when Deadpool was finally greenlit that this would be a success."

He continued to say that he "even let go of getting paid" to make the action flick, noting that his co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick weren’t allowed on set. "…so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room," he told the outlet.

In the interview, Reynolds said that the challenging process to make the movie was a "lesson."

"I think one of the great enemies of creativity is too much time and money, and that movie had neither time nor money," he said of his takeaway from the experience. "It really fostered focusing on character over spectacle, which is a little harder to execute in a comic-book movie. I was just so invested in every micro-detail of it and I hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time."

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The movie was made on a $58 million budget and grossed $782.8 million worldwide before spinning out a sequel with nearly twice the budget.

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eynolds, who also produces the film series, joined Reese and Wernick as a co-writer on 2018’s Deadpool 2 and continues his role in the third movie, Deadpool & Wolverine, which also stars Hugh Jackman, 55, reprising his role as Wolverine.

The actor shared that the first pitch he had with Marvel Cinematic Universe producer Kevin Feige "was a Deadpool-and-Wolverine movie. It’s always the thing I want."

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Now, Deadpool & Wolverine is set to release on July 26 and will follow the two characters as they team up on a new mission.Speaking to PEOPLE in May about the movie and their real-life friendship, Reynolds recalled meeting Jackman on set in 2008 before filming his big screen debut as the antihero character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

"I was blown away.  And I was nervous as hell. I was walking through the trailers, jet-lagged, disoriented, feeling really green and kind of out of my depth, and there was no script to look at," Reynolds said to Jackman. "It was just like, what's going to happen?"

He continued, "And I heard my name, ‘Ryan!' in between these trailers as I was walking. And it was you. Just the fact that you knew my name meant so much to me. And you came over, you gave me a big hug and you said, 'Welcome aboard.' "

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