a starting point

I think there’s every possibility that you’re right and that my dementia is starting to set in early. If we had one in town, would it have the same charm? Snog sounds like something special in a British accent. Do we even have a frozen yoghurt place in town? They love going to my Mom’s, they know that they’re going to be spoilt rotten and that there will be a lot of “Don’t tell your parents” happening… But that’s what grandparents are for. I know, I know, and not all Los Angeles is bad, just the Hollywood glitz and glamour side of it. 

If he had the beard, it would be at the length of Dumbledore’s, let’s be honest here.

So in that case I’m… I want to say 21? A mature 21 year old. 

As long as you don’t forget me, I think we’re good. Mmmm, probably not. We don’t even snog in the US, that’s a firm UK thing. A fun thing, but theirs nonetheless. Max does make is sound far more appealing than we could… I get why Ashley things he hangs the moon and the stars. That accent is dreamy. We do, actually? Have you never gone? We should take our kids and go there. It’s a nice family-run one. It’s the fun thing, when being with the grandparents. We’ll do the same, when we’ll have grandchildren. We’ll spoil them rotten, and we’ll give them back tired and over-sugared, and with a broad smile. Then we’ll go to bed and laugh at the misery of our children and their partners. I prefer living, where we do, away from it all. It makes it more believable that everything’s normal. Or as normal as it gets. 

Probably. He’d still be a handsome man, though.

A mature twenty-one year-old… does that make me a cougar then? Or am I your sugar mama?

A sugar mama? If that’s something that you’re into... But you do supply me with candy and sweet things, so I suppose you are, in a respect. 

Chris Evans on 'Lightyear,' playing bad guys and being 'a romantic person': 'I love love, who doesn't?'

Finally, Chris Evans gets to play an iconic hero that doesn’t involve working out.

That’s why it was so nice hitting a recording studio rather than a gym for his role as Buzz Lightyear in the animated sci-fi adventure “Lightyear” (in theaters Friday). “Pixar literally does the heavy lifting for this one,” quips Evans, whose buff and star-spangled Captain America won over Marvel fandom’s hearts and minds.

The "Toy Story" spinoff is an origin story for the beloved space ranger, with Evans voicing the role popularized by Tim Allen. In “Lightyear,” Buzz and his fellow intergalactic travelers get stuck on a planet millions of light years from Earth and have to fight a robot army led by the evil emperor Zurg.

Evans, 41, didn’t stray too far from his predecessor for inspiration.

“The reason we're doing this movie is because Tim Allen made such an iconic impact,” Evans says. “Not only would you be a fool to not take his interpretation because it worked so well, but the truth is this character is in fact the human version of that toy, so there does need to be overlap in terms of their cadence and nature."

“Lightyear” director Angus MacLane says he didn’t want to cast an Allen impressionist or even a “superheroic type” for Buzz but instead someone who had “a commanding presence that also is able to be funny without being goofy.” The filmmaker found that watching Evans in Bong Joon-ho’s dystopian film “Snowpiercer,” “where you really could see the range of what Chris could do.”

It took a while, however, for Evans to find the right voice-acting mojo. “At the beginning, I almost felt like a deer in the headlights,” he recalls. “I would just be so still. You're so focused on your voice, it almost would rest every other part of my body. But with every passing session, you find a little more comfort and before you know it, you are incorporating your physicality and that would inform the deliveries.”

After almost a decade of playing Cap, Evans is switching up his “creative appetite” and playing some antagonists for a change. He played the shady, sweater-clad Ransom in Rian Johnson’s 2019 murder mystery “Knives Out” and in the upcoming Netflix spy film “The Gray Man” (in theaters July 15, streaming July 22), Evans stars as psychopathic rogue secret agent Lloyd Hansen, who's hunting down a former CIA colleague played by Ryan Gosling. (In the movie, Gosling’s character mocks his foe’s “trash 'stache.” Evans’ key to growing it? “Luckily, I just had to sit and wait.”)

Evans enjoys exploring “a frame of mind that's so dissimilar from my own. It's easy when you're playing someone like Captain America to understand why he feels compelled to do what's right. You certainly can relate to the desire to be good.”

In contrast, “someone like Lloyd has such a unique perspective on the world,” he adds, “and it manifests in such a dark way, but to him it's completely normal. It's a fun chess game to try and get inside a role like that.”

After co-starring with Ana de Armas in “Knives Out” and “The Gray Man,” she and Evans reunite for next year’s Apple TV+ film “Ghosted,” which Evans describes as “a little throwback” to '80s and '90s action adventures like “Romancing the Stone."

“It's the type of movies that I love that I don't think get made enough,” says Evans, who got a kick out of mixing romance and comedy. “Most characters you channel through your own experience and I consider myself a romantic person. I love love, who doesn't? It's nice to have that take a center role in a piece of material as opposed to saving the world.”

An Instagram photo of his “fluffy” hairdo for the role snagged 4.5 million likes, proof of Evans’ exceeding popularity and penchant to go viral at any time. “Most of my career, I'm just standing on the shoulders of giants already. So if that type of interest in my hair is the downstream impact of the artistry of other people, I'll take it,” he says. However, Evans admits that he’s not as into the leading-man gig as he is group efforts these days.

@itschristopherevans​

I N S T A G R A M :: simplysophiab

This is 41, @itschristopherevans. 🥳 ❤️ 🥳

Since you’ve been buzzing recently - and not just during that puppy interview, but that might have been the cutest thing I have seen since our kids realising they could use your puppy eyes to get what they want - we aren’t all by ourselves hidden away somewhere for your birthday. I wouldn’t want to trade this in for the world, however, I love, love, LOVE seeing you thrive and realise your goals, one after the other. My love for you knows no bounds, when it comes to every little piece of you, and that includes your work ethics, and the love you have for our craft (see also: moustache-gate No. 2 - I still don’t know how CJ happened during MG No. 1, I really don’t 😂). 

We also have the best tour guides with us for this trip in @itsashleyirons & @justmaxirons - cannot wait to see what we get up to later, even I don’t know what’s planned.

One thing is for certain - I love you, all of you, and our kids, and our life together so, so much, that I cannot wait to share the next 41 birthdays (and loads more with you). Every day with you has me falling in love with you all over again, and that’ll never stop. 🥰

Happiest of birthdays, my love! 

The next 41 birthdays?  By then, I’ll be the ripe old age of 82! Why are you aging me so much? But let me tell you something... If I wake up then, and every year until then, as happy as I am today (and I can’t see how I wouldn’t be) then I’ll have been living my life in the right way. 

I’m looking forward to celebrating with you today (and for whatever our friends might have planned for us).