Meg
Ryan
Occupation
- Actress
Date of Birth
- 19 November 1961
Birth Place
- Fairfield, Connecticut, USA
Mailing Addresses
Meg Ryan
11718 Barrington Court, #508
Los Angeles, CA 90049 USA
Born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra in Fairfield,
Connecticut, Meg, or Peggy, as she was then called, didn't exactly have an
effervescence-inducing upbringing. When she was fifteen, her homemaker mother
Susan abandoned the family to become an actress, leaving father Harry, a high
school math teacher and coach, to raise their four children. It was Meg, of
course, who would become the actress-her and her mother's shared love of emoting
wouldn't prove enough to ameliorate their shattered relationship. A popular,
charismatic, and academically successful student at Bethel High School, Meg
enrolled at the University of Connecticut to study journalism following
graduation. Her mother helped her secure a Screen Actors Guild card under her
maiden name-Ryan-and Meg was subsequently able to pay her tuition in large part
with the money she earned from appearances in television commercials.
Two years into her degree, Ryan had the boon to earn an auspicious feature-film
debut in the supporting role of Candice Bergen's daughter in George Cukor's Rich
and Famous (1981). Encouraged by the experience, the then-twenty-year-old
dropped out of school and turned to the realm of television for acting jobs,
first appearing in an ABC Afterschool Special titled Amy and the Angel, and then
in the recurring role of Betsy Montgomery on the daytime drama As the World
Turns. Departing the world of soapy intrigue after the 1984 season, Ryan
relocated to Los Angeles to film the short-lived series Wildside. Undismayed by
the failure of the small-screen effort, Ryan decided to stay on and make a bid
for movie stardom. An appearance in Amityville III: The Demon (1983) did little
to recommend her to the moviegoing public at large, but she gained good notice
for her next assignment, a solid supporting turn in the jingoistic Tom Cruise
actioner Top Gun (1986), in which she was cast as the wife of Cruise's naval
fighter co-pilot, played by Anthony Edwards. Ryan and Edwards' ultimately
tragedy-tinged fictional romance translated into a short-term real-life
relationship.
In 1989, Ryan's winsome ways were showcased to best advantage in her very first
leading role, in Rob Reiner's definitive late-eighties romantic comedy When
Harry Met Sally . . ., which demolished box-office barriers, thanks in no small
part to Ryan's now-famous simulated-orgasm scene. The sudden cinematic sensation
had found her stock-in-trade characterization: the slightly befuddled,
occasionally daffy, endlessly adorable, and always endearing comic-romantic
heroine. Her own private romantic life solidified when she married Dennis Quaid,
whom she had first met during filming of the 1987 sci-fi flick Innerspace; the
two subsequently became a couple when they re-teamed for the botched 1988 noir
remake D.O.A. Quaid willingly underwent a stint in rehab for cocaine addiction
prior to their 1991 nuptials, and by all accounts Ryan has made him a much
happier man. The couple's son, Jack Henry, was born in 1992; the family divides
its time between a home in Santa Monica and a hundred-acre ranch in Montana that
once belonged to actor Warren Oates.
Professionally, the former high school homecoming queen reigned again in Nora
Ephron's unabashedly gimmicky button-pusher Sleepless in Seattle (1993), in
which her hopelessly romantic Baltimore journalist discovers fated love with
continent-divided kindred Tom Hanks, he a Seattlite widower. Despite creditable
supporting and leading dramatic roles-like her performance as a trampy drifter
in the disturbing true-life tragedy Promised Land (1988); her portrayal of Jim
Morrison's druggy girlfriend in The Doors (1991); and her gut-wrenching turn as
a charming alcoholic wife in When a Man Loves a Woman (1994)-audiences have come
to prefer Ryan in romantic comedies, and her riskier, darker screen efforts tend
to be eclipsed by the sunny attractions of her more popular lightweight screen
persona. Not that all of her sentimental turns have made for blockbuster
successes: 1990's chimerical fable Joe Versus the Volcano, in which she played
three different characters, missed the mark; 1992's fantasy-romance A Prelude to
a Kiss, despite its admittedly fine performances by Ryan and co-star Alec
Baldwin, was a strained effort in the final analysis; and 1994's I.Q., in which
Ryan starred as a egghead professor estranged from the more romantic pursuits of
life, fell decidedly flat.
Ryan made a strong stake in the business side of filmmaking in 1993, when she
established her own Fox-based production company, Fandango Films (now Prufrock
Pictures). She returned to her screwball comedy roots for her feature producing
debut, 1995's only modestly entertaining French Kiss, which partnered her with a
roguish Kevin Kline. Following a captivating supporting turn in the hip period
piece Restoration (also 1995), the slight, prepossessing actress convincingly
portrayed a medevac helicopter pilot in Courage Under Fire (1996), a soldierly
drama that teamed her with Denzel Washington and a then-unknown Matt Damon.
Though she slightly tarnished her sweetness-and-light reputation with her darkly
waggish performance as a jilted girlfriend with revenge on her mind in Griffin
Dunne's feature-directorial debut Addicted to Love, Ryan reaffirmed her standing
as a cinematic sweetheart nonpareil by voicing 1997's most comely animated
damsel in distress, Anastasia. Ryan then starred as a heart surgeon who
discovers unearthly romance with a beatific Nicolas Cage in City of Angels, a
film loosely based on the Wim Wenders classic Wings of Desire.
Next up for Ryan: the Warner Bros. romantic comedy You Have Mail, about a pair
of co-workers (Ryan and Tom Hanks) who unwittingly fall for each other via an
online correspondence; a remake of the 1939 classic The Women that will partner
her in onscreen back-biting and off-screen producing with Julia Roberts; and a
film adaptation of the David Rabe play Hurly-Burly, the A-list cast of which
will also include Sean Penn, Robin Penn, Kevin Spacey, and Chazz Palminteri.
Ryan is now working on Hanging Up, a film that tells the story of three sister
after te death of their father.
Filmography
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