Celebrities are just like Us — even they have difficulties maintaining a work/life balance.
Blake Lively opened up about how she sometimes struggles to give equal attention to her career and life off set. “When you’re working, sometimes you feel guilty for not being in your personal life in those hours you’re at work,” she shared in an interview with Entertainment Tonight on Monday, August 5. “And then, when you’re at work, you feel guilty by being distracted by wishing that you were at your personal life.”
The balancing act is something Lively, 36, shares with her It Ends with Us costar Jenny Slate. “Both of us really love our personal lives a lot and we love our job and we love our work, and we take it very, very seriously and we work very, very, very hard,” she shared. “And we completely immerse ourselves in our work. But who we are is defined by our personal life so much more than our work, and we can be both of those things at once.”
Lively shares four kids — daughters James, 9, Inez, 7, and Betty, 4, and son Olin, born in 2023 — with her husband, Ryan Reynolds. Slate, 42, shares daughter Ida, 3, with her husband, Ben Shattuck.
Knowing Slate was going through the same experience on the It Ends With Us set is something Lively said was “very grounding.” She continued: “Two things can be true. We can love our work and our work can be very important to us and we can be all in on our work. We can also our personal [lives] and it can be important to us and it can be all in. And we were doing really hard things, and we were doing them well and juggling them well.”
Lively’s career and personal life recently came together in Reynolds’ new film, Deadpool & Wolverine. She lent her voice to a female version of Deadpool, called Ladypool, while Inez and Olin took on the roles of Kidpool and Babypool, respectively. James was credited as playing a “screaming mutant,” while Betty was listed in the credits as Hugh Jackman’s “wrangler.”
Last month, Reynolds, 47, revealed that he would be open to expanding his and Lively’s family. “The more the merrier. As many as possible,” he joked to E! News on July 22. “As many little heartbeats as possible, just running around, wrecking stuff in the house. I love it. Let’s have more!”
During the July 30 episode of the “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast, Reynolds also revealed that their kids “can’t even go to sleep unless they’re in our bed,” adding, “As much as I’d say I’d love to spread out and fall asleep normally, I withhold that.”
Lively and Reynolds’ work lives recently intersected again as It Ends with Us and Deadpool & Wolverine share the same music composers. “Just wait til you hear @rob_simonsen score, yeah the @deadpoolmovie composer,” Lively wrote in a Friday, August 2, Instagram Story. “My husband and I share more than children.”
It Ends With Us hits theaters on Friday, August 9.
