Ryan Phillippe is finally ready to move on after splitting with Reese Witherspoon two years ago, with the help of a new tattoo.

He officially divorced Reese last October, but has struggled since to find focus in his life over the past two years, but he’s suddenly become filled with renewed hope and ambition.

He’s had a tattoo of a phoenix inked into his skin to symbolize his rebirth on the planet Earth.

He says, “I think because I’ve arrived at a place in my life that it makes sense. I have a focus, and my goals are clearer to me now.”

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He knew it was coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier for Ryan Phillippe to see ex-wife Reese Withersoon with her new man.

“It’s bizarre,” the actor told USA Today, adding that he avoids looking at photos of Witherspoon and boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal.

“There’s plenty of times when I say, ‘What a strange situation I’ve found myself in,’ ” he said. “But at a certain point you know it’s going to happen, so you are prepared.”

Phillippe, 33, split from Witherspoon – the mother of his two children, Ava, 8, and Deacon, 4 – in October 2006. The actress’s new romance first made headlines last March, when she and the Brokeback Mountain star were spotted dining at L.A.’s Il Sole.

As for Phillippe’s own love life, the actor – who’s been linked to actress Abbie Cornish – remained reticent. “It’s just something I would really rather not address,” he told the paper. “It has to be a ‘no comment.’ ”

He also insists that despite a painful divorce, he isn’t ruling out a second marriage.

“I can see doing it again, yeah,” he said. “And I can certainly see possibly having children again. I’m pretty young, and there are many beautiful things about that idea of marriage and family. It just doesn’t always work out perfect for everybody.”

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Ryan Phillippe has given his ex-wife Reese Witherspoon and her boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal his blessing.

Phillippe and Witherspoon, who have two children together, ended their eight-year marriage with a divorce last year. He is now dating Australian starlet Abbie Cornish, while Witherspoon is in a relationship with her Rendition co-star Gyllenhaal.

And Phillippe wishes Witherspoon and Gyllenhaal the best. Speaking to U.S. radio host Howard Stern on Thursday, Phillippe said, “He’s a good dude. I love her and I want her to be happy, and it seems like she is.” The 33-year-old added that his split from Witherspoon was a “mutual” decision. He said, “Leading up to it, we had been spending so much time apart. That’s a huge part of it. There are so many obstacles.”

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To get ready for his role in the film, Stop-Loss, in which he plays a military hero, Ryan Phillippe says he trained just like any other soldier.

“Initially, we got physically and emotionally ready with a boot camp at the beginning,” the actor tells Extra. “It gave us the opportunity to bond, like in the most sincere fashion. Ultimately the relationships we formed were what lent itself to truth in the film.”

When it comes to the film’s very topical and sensitive subject matter, Phillippe says, “I think the war itself is a backdrop. I think this film doesn’t tell you how to feel about it because, coming in, you already know. This is more about the human aspect of how you put your life together when you come home and I think it speaks to a younger generation that hasn’t see these films.”

Phillippe adds that there were many real-life military families who came to him during filming, thanking him for telling their story. “They’ve all said, ‘This is the most truthful representation of what my son is going through, what my husband is going through.’ That’s really gratifying.”

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Ryan Phillippe tells ET fatherhood came naturally, “Being a father is by far my greatest achievement and the most important thing about me. My mother had a day-care center in my house growing up and I come from a big family on the East Coast. We grew up helping take care of and raise kids, so it’s second nature to me.”

After his split from actress Reese Witherspoon, Phillippe says he faced unusual parenting challenges, such as trying to explain to his kids who the paparazzi are, “You try to make it seem as commonplace as you can. That’s sort of the approach you have to take with all of that stuff, with the press, with the paparazzi. You kinda just say, ‘Well, you know, Mommy and Daddy do this certain kind of job and it creates an interest in the public,’ and you minimize all of that stuff as much as you can.”

Phillippe goes on to say that he can relate to the character he plays in his new film because he nearly enlisted to be a soldier himself, “Out of high school, I didn’t have a ton of options because my grades weren’t the best and I didn’t come from money,” he says. “When I graduated, it was around the time of the first Gulf War and I did go and sit in a recruitment office and got the T-shirt and everything. The guy who went in with me ended up going over and serving in the first Gulf War, but I went to New York to be an actor instead.”

ET Online

Ryan Phillippe calls his divorce from Reese Witherspoon, after seven years of marriage, “the darkest, saddest place I had ever been.”

The actor, 33, tells W magazine, “There were a good four or five months of not being able to get out of bed. It was the worst time in my life.”

But that was then. “You get through it,” Phillippe says now. “It’s a process that’s not easy, but I get less and less sad about it every day.”

The marriage produced two children for the couple: Ava, now 8, and Deacon, now 4. The pair’s split prompted speculation that acting couples cannot peaceably co-exist – especially when the woman earns more than the man (let alone wins an Oscar). Phillippe acknowledges that theory, but doesn’t necessarily buy its premise.

“I certainly understand the level of interest that comes along with a public marriage, and with being married to someone like Reese, who so many people love with good reason. People want answers,” he says. “But I think sometimes they wouldn’t be happy with what the answers would be.”

Instead, he says, the reason for the breakup was “far more complicated and far less interesting than it’s made out to be. To look and search for these salacious reasons, to pin it on a person, or a moment in someone’s life, it’s not realistic.”

Though the drama of the divorce has died down – and he and Witherspoon, 31, “have done a really good job at keeping things peaceable and completely focused on” the children – “I spend a lot of time just holed up in my house in Los Angeles,” he says. “I don’t really go out because I know it’s going to turn into a photo shoot.”

Though Phillippe is in the new movie Stop-Loss, a drama about Iraq war soldiers, he admits that the main reason he’s of interest to the paparazzi “is because I was married to the highest-paid actress in the world. Even though I’m not with her any longer, there is a certain amount of notoriety that I guess sticks beyond.”

Say he, “It’s just not interesting to me. It’s not how I want to be defined.”

As for reports that his current costar, Abbie Cornish, was the third wheel in his marriage, and one of the possible causes of the divorce, Phillipe laughs off the notion.

“It was unfair for her to be called the names that she was, because it wasn’t about that,” he says. “I don’t think an outside person can ever cause a divorce. I had difficulties in my relationship, and in my marriage, long before I ever met her.”

Source, Splash 

Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon both respected each other by waiting until their divorce became final before announcing any new romances. Sources say that Ryan is upset by how much time their kids, Ava and Deacon, are spending with Reese’s man, Jake Gyllenhaal.

According to a family friend, the kids love Jake so much that when it’s time for Reese to hand them over to Ryan , little Deacon can’t stop talking about Jake. “It’s Jake did this, Jake brought mommy flowers and coffee, Jake says we should recycle,” the friend tells OK!

Sources say that Ryan called Reese and suggested that she stop letting Jake spend so much time with the kids and he wasn’t nice about it. Reese barely let him finish his sentence before she told him that what she does with her personal life is none of his business!

You go girl!

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