A fake orgasm catapulted them into the top league of 1990s film stars. US actress Meg Ryan is now celebrating her 60th birthday.
The orgasm scene from “Harry and Sally” (1989) is one of the most famous in film history and made US actress Meg Ryan a great star of the romantic comedies of the 1990s.
Ryan played Sally Albright in the film and actor Billy Crystal (73) played Harry Burns – two friends who eventually fell in love. At one point in the film, Crystal’s character explains that he doesn’t believe any of the women he slept with ever faked an orgasm, and Sally proves him wrong by staging a compelling climax in the middle of a restaurant. .
The story behind the fake climax
The relationship comedy by director Rob Reiner (74) received five nominations for a Golden Globe and the screenplay by Nora Ephron (71) also received an Oscar nomination. The famous scene was not in the script at all, as Meg Ryan revealed only a few years ago at the Locarno Film Festival, where she was awarded the honorary prize.
“We had room to improvise, and it should come across as funny. That’s when I got the idea that instead of talking about it, I could just show it,” said the Hollywood star in 2018 about the genesis of the scene, which she never did was embarrassing.
“America’s Sweetheart”
After “Harry and Sally”, Meg Ryan advanced with films such as “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993), “When a Man Loves a Woman” (1994), “IQ – Love is relative” (1994), ” French Kiss “(1995), or” E-Mail für Dich “(1998) for” America’s Sweetheart “.
“It was director Nora Ephron who reintroduced that old term and applied it to me,” said Ryan in 2018 in an interview with the “Tagblatt”. “America’s Sweetheart! I remember thinking: shit, now I have a label. A cute one, but labels are extremely limiting.”
Hot affair with Russell Crowe
At the latest, her affair of several months in 2000 with the Australian film star Russell Crowe (57), whom she met while filming “Signs of Life – Proof of Life” (2000), put an end to the unloved image. Because at this time Meg Ryan had been married to Hollywood star Dennis Quaid (67) since 1991.
In 2003 she told the Guardian: “This thing [ihre Affäre mit Crowe, Red.] happened and I was all over the tabloids and I went through the lobby and everything stopped. People stopped talking and stared at me. And then I got to the elevator and instead of collapsing and saying ‘Oh’ I just started laughing, “she remembered that perhaps a little liberating time.
Divorce and career kink
In 2001, Ryan and Quaid divorced. Much later, she did away with the accusations of that time: 2008 explained Ryan “InStyle”that Crowe was wrongly embroiled in their marital problems: “I think he did a lot of damage. But Russell didn’t ruin the marriage. He was definitely there in the end, but it wasn’t his fault.” Rather, it was a “wreck”. “I hurt him in the end too. I couldn’t have a long relationship, it wasn’t the right time for it. So I got out,” said Ryan about the end of the affair.
In the same interview, she also claimed that her husband Dennis Quaid had also been unfaithful to her: “It [ihre Affäre mit Crowe] was a great story, but what wasn’t in the story was the reality in my marriage. Dennis was not loyal to me for a long time and it was very painful. I found out more about it after my divorce, “said Meg Ryan.
And according to the motto “Once the reputation is ruined, it lives quite unabashedly” Meg Ryan also ventured into new genres at the beginning of the noughties. But films like the erotic thriller “In the Cut – When Love Kills” (2003) flopped. The many negative reactions to the film, in which she played a teacher in the arms of a woman murderer, would have surprised her, as Meg Ryan told the Swiss daily newspaper “Tagblatt”. “Only then did I realize that I had gotten stuck in the minds of the audience in a very specific way and that this film didn’t correspond to that image at all. We should have warned the audience: If you’re expecting a romantic comedy, you’re here not correct.”
Your beauty secret
But it was probably not just her fixed image and the turbulent love life that let Meg Ryan’s career collapse. There was increasing speculation about beauty interventions. In 2008, she was unusually open in an interview with the magazine “Gala” to the beauty craze in Hollywood. “Everyone should do or not do what he or she thinks is right. But I find this constant questioning and speculation about why a woman looks the way she looks downright indecent,” said the then 47-year-old.
Only last weekend, the actress declared her beauty secret again: “I eat healthy, sleep a lot and drink two liters of water every day. I also work out regularly and try to escape old age by sweating a lot”, she said the “Bild am Sonntag” on the occasion of her 60th birthday.
60th birthday without “fanfare”
Meg Ryan was born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra on November 19, 1961 in Fairfield, Connecticut in the northeastern United States. She celebrates her 60th birthday on Friday. “There won’t be much fanfare. Those times are behind me,” she told the Sunday newspaper. Her two children Jack (29) – from her marriage to Dennis Quaid – and adopted daughter Daisy will be there and a few friends.