Blake Lively knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with Ryan Reynolds for a very specific reason.
“I knew he would always be my best friend for my whole life,” the “Shallows” actress shared in the July issue of Marie Claire. “That was the biggest thing to me. I’d never known anything like the friendship that I had with him. I could like him as much as I loved him.”
The couple wed in 2012. Two years later, Lively, 28, and Reynolds, 39, welcomed their first child, daughter James. And while both parents have been working steadily since her birth, Lively shared that she and her husband have made it a priority to raise their baby girl away from the spotlight.
“Ryan had a nice, normal upbringing, and we want our kids to have the same normal life that we had. We don’t ever want to rob them of what we had, because we’d feel really selfish,” she said.
The blond bombshell, who is expecting her second child with Reynolds, also revealed that despite their best efforts to shield James from the cameras, the paparazzi are ever-present.
“I’d rather not have to deal with it all, but we knew the lifestyle we were getting into, and while it’s hard … it’s another thing when it’s our child,” Lively said. “She didn’t have the opportunity to make a decision about what she wants.”