BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — You’d never know it from the smooth-operator vibes and Disney prince handsomeness that radiate from his magazine covers, but Ryan Reynolds is often, quite secretly, a nervous wreck.

He gets racked by dread and nausea before every talk-show appearance and becomes quite convinced he might die. During his ABC sitcom days, he chose to warm up the audience, partly to ingratiate himself, but mostly to redirect his panic or, as he describes it, “the energy of just wanting to throw up.” When we met at the Four Seasons here in Beverly Hills late one afternoon in April, he had barely eaten all day, because interviews for profiles make him crazy jittery too.

“I have anxiety, I’ve always had anxiety,” Mr. Reynolds said as the hotel suite filled with an Angeleno sunshine that perfectly matched his golden latte-hued self. “Both in the lighthearted ‘I’m anxious about this’ kind of thing, and I’ve been to the depths of the darker end of the spectrum, which is not fun.”

[Summer movies 2018: What’s coming to theaters.]

It was quite the admission from a man whose outwardly sun-kissed life, and wife, are fawned over in celebrity rags, and who, in 2010, was named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive. Then again, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that the guy behind the near-pitch perfect 2016 blockbuster “Deadpool,” about a sardonic Marvel antihero with a twisted mind and a filthy mouth, could only have developed his wicked brand of humor after a lifetime of alchemizing comedy out of angst.