Blake Lively & Ryan Reynolds Supported Migrant Children’s Rights With Major Donations

Power couple Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds are pretty private people. Well, as private as two superstars can be, but when they do make headlines, it's usually for a great reason. They just gave back to two organizations that mean a lot to them. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds donated $2 million to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights. The couple announced the donation in a Sept. 4 press release.

According to E! News, the actors said that they donated the funds in order to "defend the rights and best interests of immigrant children." Their statement continued, "We're blown away by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Young Center's commitment to not only justice and democracy, but humanity. Over the last few years, our perspective has grown and we've realized we have to do everything possible to foster more compassion and empathy in this world." Lively and Reynolds concluded in the statement, "History's being written right now. We're grateful to give back to organizations who give voice to so many."

This isn't the first time that two stars have been noticed for their charitable contributions and it probably won't be the last. Back in 2017, Lively was one of six people highlighted in the "Power of Women NY" issues for the philanthropic causes they are passionate about.

In that Variety issue, Lively aligned herself with the Child Rescue Coalition, which has a goal of stopping child pornography. The mother of two worked with the organization to track down and flag the IP addresses of people who "share and download sexually explicit images of minors." The duo contributes to many different causes and encourages others to do the same. In November 2018, Reynolds revealed to Deadline that proceeds from his movie Once Upon A Deadpool would go toward the F*ck Cancer campaign.

There's more to it than that though. Once Upon a Deadpool was actually a re-cut version of Deadpool 2 with a PG-13 rating, instead of the original movie's R rating. Reynolds revealed to Deadline, "Fox has been asking for a PG-13 basically since the start in 2006."

Reynolds explained, "I've said no since 2006. Now, this one time, I said 'Yes' on two conditions. First, a portion of the proceeds had to go to charity. Second, I wanted to kidnap Fred Savage. The second condition took some explaining…" No one was kidnapped, but the charitable donations did happen.

Aside from the ticket proceeds, Reynolds managed to give back through Deadpool 2 in other ways as well. In February 2018, Reynolds shared several photos of Make-A-Wish kids visiting the movie's set. Along with the photos, Reynolds wrote, "Deadpool kicked Cancer in the taint, but these kids do it for real every day. These foundations make dreams come true for a lot of super-brave kids. They also make dreams come true for parents, who just wanna see their kid smile."

Lively and Reynolds have both acted in superhero movies, but all of those characters pale in comparison to their real-life efforts to give back to the world.