The pair were joined by ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ director Shawn Levy to ring in their birthday month with a three-tiered confection in the woods
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Happy birthday month, Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds!
The close friends were seen celebrating their joint October milestones in a photo posted to Instagram by their Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy.
Jackman, who turns 56 on Oct. 12, and Reynolds, who will be 48 on the 23rd, stood on either side of a birthday cake for the photo, holding up the florally decorated, three-tier dessert and making surprised faces for the camera.
Levy, 56, joined the pair for a couple of group snapshots in the two subsequent slides, which showed the three men posing amid a serene-looking woodsy backdrop.
“October is the best month for buddy birthdays🎂 A perfect fall day celebrating early with two of the BEST❤️💛,” the filmmaker wrote in his caption.
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Reynolds and Jackman go way back as friends, but Levy has known Jackman even longer than Reynolds — and in fact, Jackman predicted the two would hit it off.
As Levy recalled to PEOPLE in April, “Hugh said, ‘For what it’s worth, if you ever meet and work with Ryan Reynolds, you’re never going to stop,’ ” while on the set of their 2011 movie Real Steel.
“That was 2010,” he added with a grin. “Hugh Jackman, the prophet — a little-known special talent.”
And since then, “Ryan and I have become extremely close friends,” Levy said, noting that they spend “a lot” of time together, especially since they live “half a block from each other” in New York City.
“More than I’ve spent with any male friend since literally high school,” he added.v
Levy, Reynolds and Jackman have been spotted all over the Big Apple together, and were even seen hanging out together alongside Taylor Swift in a box at a Jets-Chiefs game last year.
Speaking with PEOPLE in October 2023, Levy noted how he not only met Reynolds but went on to direct him in both Free Guy (2021) and The Adam Project (2022) before Deadpool & Wolverine — and Jackman’s prediction was correct.
“I haven’t made a truly close friend since college,” he said. “Men don’t tend to make a lot of friends. But Hugh and Ryan happen to be the two guys that I talk about real life s— with.”
Levy added at the time, “We get together as husbands and guys and dads. And now we get to work together, which has been an absolute blast.”