Having become America’s darling since the huge success of the rom-com “When Harry Met Sally”, Meg Ryan was one of the biggest Hollywood stars of the 1990s. However, the sequel proved to be very difficult for the actress. ..
In the 1990s, Meg Ryan was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. With her mischievous smile, she had become America’s sweetheart after starring in a series of hugely successful romantic comedies, from When Harry Met Sally to Sleepless in Seattle to You’ve Got Mail.
Until her career markedly stalled in the 2000s, the actress becoming less and less present on screen over time.
After studying journalism in New York – which she did not finish – Meg Ryan distinguished herself in the credits of several television series. It was in 1981 that she made her debut on the big screen in George Cukor’s comedy The Rich and Famous. Five years later, she is on the poster for Tony Scott’s Top Gun, where she plays alongside Tom Cruise.
In 1989, it was the international consecration for the actress: her performance in When Harry met Sally opposite Billy Crystal made her a Hollywood icon, specializing in the rom-com genre.
In 1995 in French Kiss, she played Kevin Kline’s lover. In Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, she co-starred with Tom Hanks, under the guidance of a gender specialist, the late Nora Ephron.
Warner Bros.
Meg Ryan sometimes frees herself from the genre that made her famous, appearing in the credits of the science fiction film The Adventure Within (where she meets her future husband Dennis Quaid), of the war film A l’ test du fire, and even tries dubbing on the animated film Anastasia.
The decade that opens for her, that of the 2000s, will however prove to be very difficult for the actress, both personally and professionally.
In 2001, her film L’Echange de Taylor Hackford, in which she co-starred with Russell Crowe, was a resounding failure in theaters and torpedoed by critics. For her part, the actress also suffered harsh comments about her romance with the actor. This fatal affair will be right of his marriage of ten years with Dennis Quaid.
The scandal escalates to such an extent that Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan even refuse to promote the film. “It had an indelible and very destructive effect on the film’s release in the United States, as the actual story completely overshadowed the film” even declared the director to the Guardian, shortly before the preview of the film in Great Britain.
In an interview with the New York Times in 2019, Meg Ryan herself admits that the battered fate of this film and her affair with Crowe “were a big turning point. I felt the effect as if I was the bad guy in the story”.
If the image of Meg Ryan comes out very tarnished from this affair, the thrust, if one dares to say, will be worn barely two years later, with the film In the cut. In an effort to escape the romantic label that sticks to her skin, she stars in this erotic thriller directed by Jane Campion.
A big failure at the box office, the film almost sounds like a knockout blow. “When I did In the Cut, the reactions were vicious” loose the actress in the interview with the New York Times.
“I had the feeling that this might be my last film”. Hollywood seems to be turning its back on it, and vice versa: “this feeling with Hollywood was mutual: I was done with Hollywood, and Hollywood with me, probably”.
In the spans of Hollywood precisely, some have not failed to treacherously underline its important recourse to cosmetic surgery, in particular a lip implant which has definitively erased the mischievous smile of its beginnings…
The rest of her career is much more sporadic and discreet, Meg Ryan turning in films that had little or no impact on the public. In 2008, she thus gave the reply Antonio Banderas in my Favorite Spy, a romantic comedy mixed with espionage, in which she played the mother of Colin Hanks (son of Tom Hanks).
The same year, she obtained the first role of another comedy, The Women, the first film of the American Diane English, in which she played the role of a woman who is unaware that her husband is cheating on her while all her friends are aware.
Muse Entertainment Enterprises
What follows is a succession of missed appointments. His name has circulated several times in recent years for a possible return to television, in particular to be the voice-over of a spin-off of How I Met Your Mother, which ultimately never saw the light of day.
There was also talk of a comedy series for NBC in 2013. In 2017, she appeared in the television comedy Picture Paris.
The actress also chooses to step back, to take advantage of her children and take better care of them. “I felt like I didn’t know enough about myself or the world anymore to reflect it as an actress. I felt isolated” she told the New York Times.
Aged 61, rather serene about the hiatus in her career as an actress, she takes her time. It is also true that in the ruthless environment of Hollywood, where one willingly worships eternal youth even at the sometimes dearly paid price of the scalpel, roles become rarer for actresses.
Her comeback should be thanks to Netflix, which placed an order in March 2022 for a film that she will direct, A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out, adaptation of a book by Sally Franson published in 2018, the story of which is at crossing of the series The Bold Type, Mad Men and The Devil wears Prada.
The film will mark, ultimately, Meg’s return to the genre that made her famous, the rom-com. Like an eternal restart.