Alanis Morissette Hit "Rock Bottom" When She and Ryan Reynolds Called Off Their Engagement

Who

Canadian Golden Globe-nominated actor and Aviation Gin co-owner, Ryan Reynolds, 45, and 7-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, actress, and fellow Canadian Alanis Morissette, 48.

How They Met

Alanis and Ryan reportedly met at Drew Barrymore’s birthday party in 2002 (which is a sentence with the most organic 2002 vibes). By June 2004, the “very passionate” duo was engaged.

Why We Loved Them

Few unions are purer than two Canadians in love.

When They Peaked

Alanis had a lot of wonderfully weird things to say about her movie star beau. She once told People she felt “so loved by him, in a trampoline kind of way” (so Reynolds’s love is like a mass market eyesore that crops up in suburban lawns? Kidding.). She also said he’s “like a soul brother to me,” with an important distinction, “except that I want to jump his bones.”

The Breakup

After a nearly three-year engagement, Reynolds and Morissette announced their separation. “They remain close friends and continue to have the utmost love and admiration for each other. They ask that their privacy be respected surrounding this personal matter,” their reps shared in a statement.

It’s unclear precisely what caused the split, but in true Alanis fashion, the singer-songwriter channeled her post-breakup angst into song. Her 2008 album Flavors of Entanglement addresses the fallout, with her track “Torch” acting as the most direct link. “It’s really about my grief,” she told Access of the song, which boasts lyrics like “I miss your smell and your style and your pure abiding way.”

She admitted to Women’s Health during this same time frame that she gets “angry” at herself “for staying in relationships way too long," though she never called out her time with Reynolds specifically.

However, it’s safe to say that the high-profile aspect of her relationship contributed to its end. During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, she said she’d be “avoiding [public romance] in the future.”

“I think it's the straw that breaks the camel's back," Morissette told the L.A. Times of her split from Reynolds. “I was a full-blown love addict, so it was like, 'I can't keep doing this, my body can't take it.' For someone who is a love addict, [breakups are] debilitating.”

"I've been on a constant journey toward finally surrendering and hitting the rock bottom that I've been avoiding my whole life. So this was a huge, critical juncture for me,” she continued. “Everything broke, and it was an amazing and horrifying time."

Reynolds kept his emotional journey closer to the chest and began dating actress Scarlett Johansson soon after he and Morissette called it quits. News of their engagement broke around the same time that Alanis’s breakup album was released, which also coincided with the release of ScarJo’s debut album Anywhere I Rest My Head. Isn’t it ironic? (She was “really happy for him,” by the way.)

Speaking of “Ironic,” the only times Ryan has spoken on the record about his ex have been really, really weird. In 2016, while promoting Deadpool on the Today show, he began singing along to Alanis’s 1995 hit, uttering the line “Isn’t it ironic?” in falsetto before asking then-host Matt Lauer, “Don’t you think?”

That same month, in an interview with EW that he did as Deadpool, he told the publication that his favorite holiday was Alanis Morissette Day (which is a real thing, FYI).

Apparently, he pulled his “Ironic” schtick during an interview in 2017 as well.

Where They Are Now

Since that breakup album in 2008, Alanis has released 3 more studio albums.

The singer married American rapper Souleye (aka Mario Treadway) in 2010 and welcomed a son, Ever Imre, later that same year. Daughter Onyx Solace joined the family in the summer of 2016 and their third son, Winter Mercy, was born in August 2019.

Reynolds found massive success with the Deadpool franchise, the third installment of which is currently in development.

Ryan and Johansson announced their separation in late 2010. He began dating actress Blake Lively soon after and the pair wed in 2012. They welcomed their first daughter, James, in 2014, their second, Inez, in 2016, and their third, Betty, in 2019. Lively and Reynolds announced in September 2022 that they are expecting their fourth child.

#TBT: Check in every Thursday as we throw it back to some of our favorite celebrity couples of all time.