What The Cameras Don't Show Us About Blake Lively

It's in an actor's job description to convincingly transform into their character on-screen, and for a movie star like Blake Lively, some of her on-screen transformations are more than astonishing. From the wealthy New York high schooler Serena van der Woodsen in "Gossip Girl" to Lily Bloom in "It Ends With Us," Lively has dazzled fans with her memorable performances. 

In real life, she's often in the middle of controversy and drama. "It Ends With Us" director, Justin Baldoni, who sued Lively and her husband for wage loss and defamation, claimed that Lively hijacked his film. And there have long been divorce rumors about her and husband Ryan Reynolds and rumors about her being distanced from bestie Taylor Swift. However, what Lively is really like behind the cameras is a bit of a mystery.

In a Forbes interview, Lively revealed that she struggled to find fulfillment as an actor. "When I was younger, in my life and career, I would sort of shape myself to the version of myself that I thought they wanted," the actor said. "But I also knew, like, that wasn't fulfilling for me, that I wanted to be a part of the storytelling, that I wanted to be part of the narrative, whether that be in the writing, in the costume design, in creating the character." Of course, some directors and producers like Taylor Sheridan are openly more comfortable with collaborating with actors. Some aren't. Everyone's style is different, and it seems that Lively prefers collaboration.

Despite being a public figure, Blake Lively likes to keep certain details about her life private. Playing a character in front of the camera is one thing, but being the main subject of a magazine article as Blake Lively is another. She told Vogue in September 2024 that she didn't like doing photo shoots at all due to shyness. While she loves acting, being on the pages of magazines isn't where she shines. "I don't feel super comfortable in front of a camera. It's part of why I don't want to be in magazines." She admitted that she had even avoided some photoshoots, especially with her life revolving more and more around her family. "...[T]his is I think the first cover I've done in four years."

Lively's life has changed a lot throughout the years. In 2012, she and Ryan Reynolds tied the knot, and the two have welcomed four children. Lively has taken fewer acting roles to prioritize her family. Before her 2024 Vogue cover, the last time she shared a cover photo on Instagram where she posed for a magazine was in 2016 for Variety's Power of Women event. "My life has become more intimate," she told Vogue. But even before Lively became a mother, she had intended to keep certain aspects of her life private. The A-lister told Allure the same thing back in 2012 about being shy. "I can be outgoing, but I'm also very private." 

Blake Lively receives as much backlash as praise, and sometimes, one a little more than another. The "This Ends With Us" actor is far from perfect and has had some uneven public moments throughout the years. At a Wrexham game in 2023, Lively poked fun at a fan who asked her for a message to her girlfriend, who couldn't be there at the game to meet Lively in person. "Blake, please say hi to Stephanie," the fan called out to her after switching his phone to record mode. Blake waved at the camera and jokingly responded, "Hi Stephanie, you should leave him!" Stephanie later responded to Lively's message during an interview with Daily Mail. "I absolutely love Gossip Girl. I have watched it so many times, I just love Blake Lively," she said. "I was so jealous Sam had gone to the match without me because I was working and I was just crying when I got the video. I love her. She is my favorite person in the world."

While the hilarious message sparked one of Lively's best fan interactions, she has also had some questionable moments. At the London screening of "It Ends With Us," the actor was given a Taylor Swift-inspired bracelet. Her costar, Isabela Ferrer, happily put on hers in the same video taken by the French entertainment network Allocine, but Lively's response was disheartening. "I'm gonna put it here because it doesn't go with my outfit, but I will wear it later."

Colleen Hoover, who worked closely with Blake Lively for the film adaption of her bestselling novel, "It Ends With Us," voiced her admiration for the star's commitment to her children in an interview with Vogue. In addition to running multiple businesses and starring in movies, Lively makes sure that she's a present parent. "She could be on a phone call with, it doesn't matter, the freaking Pope, and if her kid walks into the room, she's gonna give one hundred percent of her attention to her children," Hoover said. As a mother as well, the bestselling author shared that she was very touched by the mom side of Lively.

Paul Feig, who has worked with the star in both "A Simple Favor" and its sequel echoed Hoover's sentiment. He highlighted Lively's ability to separate work from the rest of her life, which many people find hard to do. "When she's working and when she's in it, a rock-solid pro." He noticed how Lively could turn her work mode off and be completely present with her kids. "She's the best, one of the best moms I've ever seen." Kaitlin Olson, whose husband is a close friend of Lively's husband, also praised the star's parenting style in response to the New York Times' Instagram reel about the "It Ends With Us" behind-the-scenes drama. "@blakelively is a kind, lovely, honest and generous person (and an incredible mom) FYI," the "High Potential" actor voiced her support (via People).

Colleen Hoover has had a lot to say about her time working with Blake Lively on bringing the film adaptation of her novel to life. Before getting to know Lively in person, Hoover was already a fan. "I'm a huge Blake Lively fan first and foremost," she told The Hollywood Reporter. While she had all the jitters about working with the megastar, her first experience meeting with Lively did not disappoint. She admitted that she wasn't involved in the creative process before filming started, but she trusted Lively's experience as an actor and a fashion icon for the details about Lily, and she was very happy with how it turned out. "I feel like she just has such talent and capabilities," the novelist said. "I don't know that there was any advice I could have given her that would have made her portray Lily's character any better than she did." 

Hoover was blown away by Lively's performance, which she told People had exceeded all her expectations. The novelist believed the film adaption corrected some of the mistakes she made in the book. "When I wrote Lily's character, I thought I had a fairly solid image in mind but Blake's portrayal added so much depth and complexity to the character that I didn't even anticipate." When Lively's sexual harassment complaint against co-star Justin Baldoni came to light, the author voiced her support through an Instagram story (via People), telling Lively to never stop being who she is.

In her 2024 Vogue cover interview, Blake Lively shared that writing has always been one of her skill sets. Though she didn't like starting with a blank page, she had a heart for script improvement. "A blank page is not nearly as exciting to me as starting with a script and finding something people have overlooked," she said. She said considers the process of working on a script to be similar to finding treasure, and recalled her husband Ryan Reynolds telling an interviewer about her writing on every movie she worked on only to be asked whether she was a good baker. "A Simple Favor" director Paul Feig confirmed Lively's contribution to her character Emily Nelson in the film. "She did work on her dialogue to make that happen, and it just brought everything to life." 

Blake also writes on Reynolds' films, though she hardly received any credit. The "Deadpool" actor addressed this in an interview with SiriusXM. "There's a lot of A++ writing that I've done that was actually Blake," he shared (via Entertainment Weekly). He expressed his frustration about the inherent sexism in the industry, since people try to give him credit for something Lively did. "I will say that a lot of times, 'She wrote that — Blake wrote that, not me. That was her.' And it's like, they still, later on, repeat the story as I wrote it." 

Similar to sentiments shared in the alleged messages referencing Taylor Swift and Blake Lively's friendship from Justin Baldoni's lawsuit , the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter once told fans how tight she and Lively are. Not only is Swift the godmother of the Lively's kids, but she has also played her songs to Lively before releasing them to the public. Despite the red flags in Lively and Swift's relationship, the musician gave a shoutout to her bestie during her Grammy acceptance speech for "Folklore." "I want to thank James, Inez, and Betty and their parents, who are the second and third people that I play every new song that I write," she said (via Today). 

The couple's eldest daughter, James, even had a voice cameo in on "Reputation." Her voice was captured in the track "Gorgeous" and was also officially credited in the album's booklet: "Baby intro voice by James Reynolds" (via People). Before the power couple revealed their third child's name, Swift publically announced it through the "Folklore" album by including all three kids' names in "Betty."  Of course, this received the couple's blessing. "We trust her simplicity," Reynolds told SiriusXM (via People). "She's very sensitive to any of that stuff." The songs had nothing to do with their kids, but the gesture itself was sweet, and it goes without saying that Lively has brought her kids to the Eras Tour.

Family always comes first for Blake Lively. She's no stranger to taking her kids on the set of the movies she worked on. Four months after giving birth to her second child, Inez, Lively brought her newborn baby to the "All I See Is You" set so that she could easily attend to the baby's needs. "I'm not in an office where I can't do that, so she's either with me or when I'm shooting a scene, she's one room away," she told People in 2017. "If she really needs me, I can pop over there." She later brought her two kids to the "Deadpool" set in Vancouver so that they could stay together as a family. While talking to Glamour, the star revealed that you'll probably never see Reynolds and her in another movie together because they take turns doing projects. "We've each given up stuff we loved in order to not work at the same time." "It Ends With Us" was no different, but this time, things got a little complicated when she took her fourth child to work.

In the complaint Lively filed against director Justin Baldoni, she claimed that the director invaded her privacy when he entered her trailer while she was undressed with her newborn. She also claimed that she wasn't given proper lactation breaks, which led to her developing mastitis. Due to the company's alleged failure to implement COVID protocols, she and her infant son contracted COVID-19 during an outbreak.

Hugh Jackman has spent a significant amount of time with Blake Lively and her family while working on "Deadpool & Wolverine," in which he and Ryan Reynolds served as leads.He worked with Lively again for a Vogue photoshoot directed by Baz Luhrmann called "The Heist of the Heart," which was inspired by the 1955 movie, "To Catch a Thief." Lively transformed into "The Cat," the main character, where Jackman posed as her target, "L'Ombre." 

Speaking about Lively, Jackman was most astonished by her ability to shape-shift from her daily look into the star the world knows she is. "I've spent many hours with them, like in pajamas just hanging out in their house with their nine hundred children and dogs and it is just as normal as can be, and Blake will be baking and cooking and saying, 'Let's make pizza,' and then the next thing you turn around, and there she is this incredible star," he told Vogue.

Jackman admitted that he had seen Lively's touch of shyness reflected in some of the biggest names in the industry, which he believed to be tied to their ability to channel different characters. "Nicole Kidman and others have it." Jackman further compared Lively's stunning transformation to a classical Hollywood icon. "And she's, as I said, walking around in pajamas and then five minutes later — it's Elizabeth Taylor! At the height of her beauty." He noted that this was possible because Lively is comfortable in her own skin.

After Blake Lively filed a complaint with California's Civil Rights Department against Justin Baldoni and others, she launched a formal lawsuit against the director for severe emotional distress and lost wages. In response, Baldoni sued the New York Times for defamation and later filed a $400 million lawsuit against Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and publicist Leslie Sloane for damage. In the legal document, the director enclosed more text messages between him and Lively. 

While discussing the rooftop scene, Lively allegedly teased the director. "If you knew me [in person] longer you'd have a sense of how flirty and yummy and ball busting [the sex scenes] would play," she wrote in the alleged text (via Daily Mail). "It's my love language. Spicy and playfully bold, never with teeth." This is not the only instance when their message exchanges caught fans' attention. Lively allegedly refused to meet with an intimacy coordinator before filming started, reasoning that she felt good. 

She also allegedly messaged Baldoni at 2:46 AM about their chemistry on set after production had started. "It's such a good feeling to get work done that we're proud of. And to do it together. It just clicks when we find it." The messages then led to Baldoni joking saying that he liked *sshole Blake while wishing her a goodnight, to which she responded, "I've met her. So have my suppositories. Good night!"

Justin Baldoni's lawsuit disclosed many shocking alleged message exchanges between the two leads behind the scenes of "It Ends With Us." In the suit, the director accused Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds of hijacking his film and creating their own narrative. Taylor Swift also got pulled into the "It Ends With Us" legal drama when Baldoni claimed that Lively summoned him to a meeting with Reynolds and Swift in order to pressure him to accept Lively's take for a scene in the film. In a series of alleged text messages about Lively's suggested changes to the rooftop scene, Baldoni told her that he loved what he did — though he would've felt the same without the other two megastars' presence.

The "Gossip Girl" actor responded to explain her relationship with both, sharing that they were her go-to person and vice versa. She then compared herself to Daenerys Targaryen, aka the Mother of Dragon in "Game of Thrones" in an alleged text, hinting Reynolds and Swift were her dragons: "If you ever got around to watching Game of Thrones, you'll appreciate that I'm Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have a few dragons. For better or worse, but usually for better. Because my dragons also protect those I fight for. So really we all benefit from those gorgeous monsters of mine." In the suit, Baldoni claimed that Lively continued to alter the script on a daily basis.

In a viral interview that occurred during the "It Ends With Us" legal feud, Blake Lively talked about her experience with how misleading media can be. "...People care so much more about your personal life than they do your work," she told the Norwegian journalist, Kjersti Flaa (via YouTube). "If you're not open with your personal life, then they just make it up for you and share it for you." She thought the tabloid to be very intrusive and hardly ever truthful to reflect a person in real life despite exposing so much detail. "The biggest misconception that I see often is people feeling like they know someone, but they don't because they know what the media has created of someone." 

Lively herself is not a stranger to criticism and controversy; a comment she made to Flaa at the beginning of the interview when the journalist congratulated her on her pregnancy received backlash. While Flaa was rumored to be part of Justin Baldoni's smear campaign, she told The Hollywood Reporter that she wasn't aware of the controversy when she published the video. "What's happening on social media is everyone gets judged in a second and no one knows all the facts, which is really dangerous," she said. "Of course that's also happening to Blake Lively." She was only thinking about telling her side of the story, but the hate Lively had gotten from the video made her pause. "...I thought it was awful."