It’s hard to imagine a 6′ 3 man such as Alan Ritchson as a scrawny teen pirouetting across the dance floor, but we all start somewhere. Ritchson might be the brawny Jack Reacher on Amazon’s wildly successful series Reacher, but when he was young he was just like every other teenage boy: dreading going to dance class!
Ritchson told Men’s Health that he met his wife, Catherine, as a teenager in a ballet class. But he surely didn’t have the confidence of Jack Reacher (who does?) so it took months for him to talk to her. He explained, “After the millionth time of us sitting next to each other, inches away, tying our shoes—so now it’s super awkward—I was like, ‘So I heard you ice-skate.'” The rest was history, and the duo got married in 2006.
The actor also shared that, despite his height and build, he was bullied by his peers as a teen, especially when a tumor on his face started growing. “When you haven’t hit puberty and you’re 17 and you’ve got a face growing out of your face, it fortifies a sense of kindness that I’m grateful for.” He had his face fixed and swiftly moved off to Florida to become a model. It was the early 2000s, and ANTM was all the rage, so at the time it was the right thing to do.
It took some time for Ritchson to break out in the mainstream. Reacher debuted in 2022 and he will appear in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare later this year. But will all of this talent and success, we still have not seen Ritchson’s ballet skills. Were all of those ballet lessons for nothing?? He better use those moves in Reacher season three.
