He grows into grown-up roles, but not pillow talk

Ryan Reynolds can turn a phrase. During an hourlong interview, he lovingly compared child actress Abigail Breslin to “a little skin-covered lawn dart,” noted that the sitcom “Friends” was so popular in the ‘90s it “replaced Christianity” and said of the Highland Gardens Hotel, the first place he stayed in L.A. as a starving young actor, “I think it’s just held together by like, you know, congealed actor blood.”

All of these lines were delivered crisply, in a clear, deep voice and with a twinge of cynicism; Reynolds, for whatever it’s worth, has excellent diction.

The combo platter of his pretty-boy looks and a facility with well-timed sarcasm helped Reynolds get tapped as one of the guys in “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place,” a “Friends”-aspirant sitcom that ran on ABC for four seasons -- thank you very much -- from 1998 to 2001.

Now he drives a motorcycle and has been romantically linked to Scarlett Johansson. And yet the two tattoos peeking out of his long-sleeve shirt come as a surprise, given the fact that in his new movie, “Definitely, Maybe,” he stars as a sweet, single dad opposite Breslin, who played Olive Hoover in “Little Miss Sunshine.”

Reynolds, 31, interviewed at the Regent Beverly Wilshire, seemed sheepish about the tattoos, which decorate his left forearm. One is a drawing of the Nine O’Clock Gun, an old naval cannon that goes off every night at nine in Stanley Park, in Reynolds’ native Vancouver, Canada.

The other tattoo, on the underside of his wrist, is some handwritten message. And Reynolds, who was engaged for two years to singer Alanis Morissette, will neither let a nosy reporter read that tattoo nor describe what it says.

Nor, to continue in this vein, will he confirm that he’s dating Scarlett Johansson, or is engaged to Scarlett Johansson, or discuss if the tattoo has something to do with Scarlett Johansson.

Name recognition

Maybe it’s his name, the soft alliteration inviting forgetfulness, or the fact that despite amassing a list of credits in a range of commercial movies, he has yet to build a body of work, exactly. But John August, who directed Reynolds in “The Nines,” a strange, somewhat overlooked film that played the Sundance Film Festival last year, calls Reynolds the Facebook generation’s actor.

“If a person is 16 to 25, they all know who Ryan Reynolds is,” August said. “. . . He became a star through aggregation rather than through one giant movie.”

Those non-giant movies include broad comedies (“Just Friends,” “Van Wilder”), horror (“The Amityville Horror” remake) and thriller/action (“Blade: Trinity,” “Smokin’ Aces”).

The titles might seem forgettable, but directors have taken note of Reynolds’ work ethic, August said. “Actors have their public reputation, which is all the movies you’ve seen them in, but they also have the private reputation, which is what all the directors who’ve worked with the actors will say.”

Writer-director Adam Brooks discovered this when Working Title Films, which had worked with Reynolds on “Smokin’ Aces,” thought he would be right for the part of Will Hayes, a once-idealistic political operative adrift in mid-30s yuppie ennui in “Definitely, Maybe.”

“He has no vanity about himself, so it’s a very straightforward conversation with him,” said Brooks, who wrote the scripts for the romantic comedies “French Kiss” and “Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason,” and is directing his own screenplay with “Definitely, Maybe.”

Brooks calls his film a “romantic whodunit.” “Definitely, Maybe” begins as a bedtime story: Daughter Maya (Breslin) wants to hear about her father (who is in the midst of a divorce), his life before marriage and how her parents first fell in love. Telling the tale, Will, an adman, also wants to figure out how he got to this place -- past his career dreams and out of love.

Told in flashbacks, his story begins at the outset of the 1988 presidential campaign, when Will leaves his college sweetheart behind to come work in New York for Bill Clinton, buoyantly heading into his future.

The story becomes a tour of Will’s relationship history, with his lessons in love (Rachel Weisz, Isla Fisher and Elizabeth Banks costar) coinciding with his coming of age in the Clinton era -- what begins with idealistic hope ends with the disillusioned Will throwing takeout noodles at his TV during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

“Definitely, Maybe,” as a cultural timepiece, is a throwback to the era of Tom Hanks in “Sleepless in Seattle.” And it was the spirit of Hanks -- and Jimmy Stewart -- that attracted Reynolds to the role.

“The character just felt like classic male, as opposed to [what] you see a lot of, I think, in Hollywood in particular, is a lot of androgyny these days,” he said. “It’s a trend I think specifically because . . . the world is perhaps moving further away from patriarchy maybe.

”. . . He was kind to women, kind to men, he was in his skin,” Reynolds said of his character. “He was trying to do the right thing. . . . I love that; it’s unusual to read that.”

Starry projects

After this interview, Reynolds was getting set to leave for the Berlin Film Festival and a screening of “Fireflies in the Garden,” a film about a family met by tragedy, with Reynolds playing the son of matriarch Julia Roberts (in age makeup).

Upcoming for the actor is the comedy “The Proposal,” featuring Sandra Bullock as a publishing executive who marries her assistant (Reynolds) to avoid deportation to Canada.

“Just the other day, for the first time it really dawned on me, and it was such a revelation for me -- not for anyone else -- but it occurred to me that I’ve been doing this for a long time,” he said. “I always feel like a newcomer, and it was an interesting realization for me that I’ve been doing this for a long time.”

One of these days, Reynolds will break through the clutter of his own credits. It might have happened last year -- but didn’t -- in August’s surrealist film “The Nines,” in which Reynolds gave a confident performance in three roles -- a TV star under house arrest, a manic gay TV writer and a video game designer lost after a hike with his wife and daughter.

August said there is more that Reynolds can give as an actor, and more than meets the eye in what he’s already shown. According to August, the actor has turned down his share of “things blow up real good” movies in favor of scripts that he reads and likes.

“The Nines” was an ambitious attempt at a film that was at once satirical about Hollywood and on edge about the idea of existence and control; more concretely, for Reynolds, it added another wrinkle to his resume.

“There are certain scripts that I’ll read [and] I’ll think I really have to fight for this because these people are not going to have any evidence of this in my previous work, that I can do a role like this,” he said.

But that is changing.

paul.brownfield@latimes.com