'The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard': Ryan Reynolds and Salma Hayek on de-stigmatizing anxiety

The stars of The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard, Ryan Reynolds and Salma Hayek, talk to Yahoo Entertainment about mental health and anxiety.

Video transcript

- Darius Kincaid is a hitman wanted for like a zillion murders around the world.

- How often do you have this dream?

- Just once.

- Well that's not too--

- A night.

- Right.

KEVIN POLOWY: Ryan, Bryce is going through right here. He's in therapy. He's dealing with stuff. How important do you think it is to show action heroes who have real life issues in movies? I mean, especially someone who's been open about anxiety and destigmatizing it.

RYAN REYNOLDS: I don't think it's important for action heroes. I mean, that's not real life. It would be silly to try to imbue or infuse that, unless it made sense to. But in real life, I think it's important to have conversations about our inner worlds and not in a way that feels like you're a galactic black hole of me, me, me, me, me. I just mean like it's important to share each other's experience because when you feel-- when you're not alone in something that you're going through, when you realize you're not alone, it unburdens you in a way that it's almost indescribable.

So for me, it's-- you know-- I wish my dad who passed away years ago, but I wish he was the guy that talked about what was going on inside. Because I would feel like I knew him better. So having kids now, I want to make sure that a lot of that is destigmatized, and I want to make sure that I'm modeling for my own children what it's like to feel anxiety or confused or sad or angry.

That there's space for all these things, you know, and these are things that weren't necessarily modeled to me. So it's an opportunity for me, I see it as an opportunity to pass that on in a different way.

SALMA HAYEK: Yeah, and I also think that in this time where we are trying to redefine respect for women it's also a good time to redefine respect for men, and it is respectful towards men and towards each other in men to say, you are a human being. And you're supposed to have emotions. And it's OK to have anxiety, and it's OK to talk about your vulnerabilities. It's healthy.