All About Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ Four Kids: James, Inez, Betty, and Olin

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds may be high profile parents, but they’ve done their best to keep their four young children–James, Inez, Betty, and Olin—out of the public eye. Though they constantly make headlines, Lively and Reynolds are fierce protectors of their privacy, rarely sharing information about their children or taking them along to public appearances. In 2021, Lively even called out an Instagram account for posting paparazzi photos of Reynolds walking with their three daughters, saying “Some parents are ok with this. We. Are. NOT.” 

The family of four has been over a decade in the making. The Deadpool & Wolverine and Another Simple Favor stars linked up fifteen years ago on the set of The Green Lantern. After two years of dating, they wed in 2012, with a brood of babies following suit. And four children may not be enough for this power couple. In June of 2024, Reynolds revealed that he would welcome more additions to the family, telling E! News that he wants “As many as possible. As many little heartbeats as possible, just running around, wrecking stuff in the house. I love it. Let’s have more!” 

Though they don’t share too much about their young children, Lively will sometimes offer a glimpse into their family life, like a recent Instagram story about family cupcake baking. At the end of the day, motherhood is a top priority for the former Gossip Girl star: “My life has become more intimate,” Lively told Vogue in 2023.

Ahead, everything the protective parents have shared about their four adorable kids.

James Reynolds

Lively and Reynolds became parents on December 16, 2014, with the birth of their eldest child, James. An unconventional name for a baby girl, the new parents chose it to honor Reynolds’s father. Reynolds went on to jokingly defend the name choice: “I mean, I didn’t call her Summer Squash Meadow Lark, or something,” he quipped to ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

But perhaps even less conventional was the way Reynolds chose to ring in his daughter’s birth. Lively opened up to Glamour about how James had entered the world set to none other than “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye, courtesy of her jokester father.

The couple were ready to be parents, both having come from large families and eager for one of their own. And Reynolds positively embraced fatherhood, speaking candidly in 2016 about his keenness to get his hands dirty. “I have no problem waking up five times in the middle of the night and changing diapers,” he told GQ.

Despite the plans for a normal childhood, some special perks come with having celebrity parents. James’s babbling voice will forever be heard on the intro to “Gorgeous,” a song off of family friend Taylor Swift’s album Reputation. In a viral video a fan posted to X in 2018, the A-list couple excitedly jump up and down during the Reputation Stadium Tour as their daughter’s vocals boom through the speakers at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts.

Inez Reynolds

The couple welcomed their second daughter, Inez, on September 30, 2016, though kept details about the child’s sex and name mum until two months later, when the couple made their first public appearance  with their kids.  The occasion? Reynolds accepted his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with Lively and their daughters by his side.

Lively had spent her second pregnancy as something of an icon of maternity style, and Inez went on to become a little style icon herself. In 2021, Lively shared a video on Instagram stories in which she models an outfit picked by her daughter at 5 in the morning. “When you try to get your 4 year old dressed but they insist on dressing you instead,” the caption reads, overtop an image of Lively wearing a hot pink sweatshirt with rhinestone smiley, a mid-length white skirt embroidered with large pink flowers, and pumps.

Inez initially didn’t take too kindly to seeing her father’s gruesome look while filming Deadpool 2. “My 1-year-old daughter would just sob, I mean for hours after seeing me,” Reynolds told PEOPLE, her reaction to the prosthetics needed to portray the heavily scarred Wade Wilson. 

But by age 7, Inez had triumphed over her fear of Deadpool, joining her father in a small cameo appearance for 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine playing the foul-mouthed Kidpool. Reynolds joked in an Instagram post that Inez was the “only co-star [he] ever argued with.”

Betty Reynolds

It’s not every day that a baby’s name is revealed via pop song, but that’s Betty Reynolds’s reality . Less than a year after the October 4th birth of Lively and Reynolds’s third child, it was uncovered that Taylor Swift’s song, “Betty,” from her album Folklore, was titled in honor of this newest family addition, and even included little shoutouts for the elder two Reynolds kids, too.

While the pair have never confirmed why they chose the name, Betty is a moniker that runs in the family. Lively’s line of non-alcoholic carbonated mixers, Betty Buzz, was named after her grandmother and aunt, while honoring her father, Ernie. In a press release, Lively explained “…when I was working hard to build this company, I wanted any success to be in a name that was meaningful to [Ernie]. Betty was his mom and his sister’s name. Also, Ernie would not be the best name for a mixer.”

Lively’s elder daughters had an adjustment period with their new sister, although Inez was a tougher nut to crack than James. “I have two other daughters, so my oldest is very into the baby but my middle child, not so much,” Lively divulged to Jimmy Fallon, in an interview on The Tonight Show. “In the beginning, the oldest is loving on her and she’s maternal, and then our middle daughter just keeps away from her.”

Eventually, Inez warmed up to her new sibling after some more prodding. Lively continued: “…I said to [Inez], ‘You know, you’re gonna get to teach her everything she knows! You get to teach her about cities and the sky and flowers and Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse, anything you want.’ And she goes [to her new sister], ‘Oh, I didn’t love you, but now I do.’”

Olin Reynolds

Nearly three years after the birth of her third child, Lively announced her fourth pregnancy on the red carpet at the 10th Annual Forbes Power Women’s Summit, wearing a sequined mini-dress that showed off her baby bump.: Her birth announcement was characteristically subtle. Five months later, she shared a photo to Instagram, and fans immediately noticed her baby bump was gone. 

The baby’s name and sex were kept under wraps until over a year later. As Reynolds thanked the crowd at the New York premiere of Deadpool & Wolverine in July 2024, he shouted out his family and name-dropped each of his kids: James, Betty, Inez, and a new name, Olin. Later that same month, Reynolds posted a video to Instagram detailing his connection with Wrexham AEC fan John Bell who lost his son, while revealing that he had a son now, too.

Lively and Reynolds both share a love of cracking jokes, which was on display in Lively’s choice of cake for her son’s first birthday. On BBC Radio 2’s Zoe Ball and Friends show, Lively explained that, “My birthday cakes always have a little bit of a sense of humor, for my baby I just did a giant set of t–ts.”

As Olin has grown, he’s become a fan of the very film that brought his parents together: The Green Lantern. “It’s my son’s favorite movie,” Reynolds told the Time100 Summit in New York City. Even cuter is the fact that the film’s director, Shawn Levy, is Olin’s godfather. And Levy had a voice cameo for his godson in Deadpool & Wolverine, the director’s most recent collaboration with Reynolds. “Little by little, all of the Reynoldses started being a part of the movie, including their youngest,” Levy told Variety.