Ryan Reynolds claims close friend tried to sell pictures of his baby daughter with wife Blake Lively to media

The actor was devastated after discovering someone he had known his whole life was apparently offering images of his newborn daughter to the press

Talk of the town: Blake Lively with her husband, Ryan Reynolds (AFP/Getty)

Ryan Reynolds has compared finding out a close friend of 25 years was allegedly attempting to sell pictures of his newborn child to something as devastating as a death.

The Green Lantern actor described his shock at discovering a former friend had been “shopping pictures’ of his baby during an interview with GQ magazine.

Reynolds married the actress Blake Lively in 2012 and the pair welcomed their first child, a daughter, in December.

He said only his closet friends and family had been sent intimate pictures from inside the delivery room, making the alleged betrayal all the more painful.

“I kind of got in front of it, which is good,” he explained. “But it was a slightly dark period. A bad couple of weeks.

"It’s a pretty narrow group of people that I would send photos like that to. They’re just, like, my closest family and my closest friends: ‘Here’s us in the delivery room!’

"It was like a death. It was like one of those devastating things to find out.”