Meg Ryan

Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra (born November 19, 1961), known by her stage name Meg Ryan, is an American actress. Known for her leading roles as quirky, charismatic women since the late 1980s, Ryan is particularly recognized for her work in romantic comedies, a genre she dominated during the 1980s and 1990s. Dubbed "America's Sweetheart" by the media, she became one of Hollywood's most bankable stars of the latter decade.

She made her acting debut in 1981 in the drama film Rich and Famous. She joined the cast of the CBS soap opera As the World Turns in 1982. In the 1980s, Ryan appeared in Top Gun (1986), Promised Land (1987), and the Rob Reiner-directed romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally... (1989), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination.

A prolific actress through the 1990s and 2000s, Ryan starred in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), The Doors (1991), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), When a Man Loves a Woman (1994), French Kiss (1995), Courage Under Fire (1996), Anastasia (1997), Addicted to Love (1997), You've Got Mail (1998), City of Angels (1998), Proof of Life (2000), Kate & Leopold (2001), and The Women (2008). In 2015, she made her directorial debut with Ithaca, in which she also starred. After an eight year hiatus, Ryan returned to the screen in the romantic comedy What Happens Later (2023), which she also directed.

Ryan was born and raised in Fairfield, Connecticut, to Susan Jordan (née Duggan), a former actress and English teacher, and Harry Hyra, a math teacher. Her father is of Polish descent. She was raised Catholic and attended St. Pius X Elementary School in Fairfield. She has two sisters, Dana (d. 2022) and Annie (d. 2019), and a brother, musician Andrew Hyra, a member of the band Billy Pilgrim. Her parents divorced in 1976 when she was 15.

Ryan graduated from Bethel High School in 1979. She studied journalism as an undergraduate, first at the University of Connecticut and then at New York University. During college, she acted in television commercials and the soap opera As the World Turns to earn extra money. Her success as an actress led her to leave college a semester before she planned to graduate. When she joined the Screen Actors Guild, she used the surname "Ryan", her maternal grandmother's maiden name.

After her film debut in director George Cukor's final film, Rich and Famous, in 1981, Ryan played Betsy Stewart in the daytime drama As the World Turns from 1982 to 1984; her character was featured in a popular romantic story arc. She also appeared in some television commercials during the early 1980s for Burger King and Aim toothpaste, among others. Several television and smaller film roles followed, including appearances in Charles in Charge, Armed and Dangerous, and Amityville 3-D. Her role in Promised Land (1987) earned Ryan her first Independent Spirit Award nomination.

In 1986, she played Carole Bradshaw, the wife of Anthony Edwards' character, naval flight officer Nick "Goose" Bradshaw, in Top Gun. Scenes with them were reprised in the 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick as flashbacks to illustrate the emotional conflicts between lead character Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) and the Bradshaws' grown son, Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller).

Ryan appeared in the film Innerspace in 1987 with her future husband Dennis Quaid, and they subsequently costarred in the remake of D.O.A. (1988) and Flesh and Bone (1993). She also costarred in 1988 with Sean Connery and Mark Harmon in The Presidio.

Ryan's first leading role was the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally... (1989), which paired her with comic actor Billy Crystal and earned her a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. Her portrayal of Sally Albright includes an oft-recounted scene in which her character, lunching with Crystal's character in Katz's Delicatessen in Manhattan, theatrically demonstrates for him how easy it is for a woman to fake an orgasm.

Ryan next appeared in Oliver Stone's moderately successful film The Doors, and in Prelude to a Kiss, which flopped. In 1993, the hugely successful romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle paired Ryan for a second time with Tom Hanks. They had previously been the romantic leads, with Ryan playing three different women, in John Patrick Shanley's Joe Versus the Volcano in 1990 — a commercial disappointment which later developed a cult following. (Hanks and Ryan were once again paired in another box-office success, You've Got Mail, in 1998.) She earned her second nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical for her performance in Sleepless in Seattle. She was offered the role of FBI agent Clarice Starling, the protagonist of The Silence of the Lambs (1991), but rejected it due to the film's gruesome and violent themes.

In 1994, Ryan played an alcoholic high-school guidance counselor – far from the romantic-comedy ingenue roles for which she had become famous – in Luis Mandoki's social romantic drama When a Man Loves a Woman, also starring Andy Garcia. The film and her performance were both well received by critics. A critic for Variety called the film "a first-class production, accentuated by fine performances and an unflinching script," and another praised Ryan for her "roller-coaster role". The film was a notable success, grossing $50 million in the United States alone, and garnered Ryan a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role. The same year, Ryan returned to type, starring alongside Tim Robbins in Fred Schepisi's romantic comedy I.Q. The film centers on a mechanic and a Princeton doctoral candidate who fall in love, with the aid of the graduate student's uncle, Albert Einstein (played by Walter Matthau). Ryan later won Harvard's Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year award, and People Magazine dubbed her one of "the 50 most beautiful people in the world".

In 1995, critic Richard Corliss called Ryan "the current soul of romantic comedy". The same year she also starred opposite Kevin Kline in Lawrence Kasdan's French Kiss, a comedy catering to her "America's Sweetheart" image, and was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award – given to "outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry."

In 1996, Ryan starred as a helicopter pilot in the war drama Courage Under Fire, a critical and commercial success. The following year, she voiced the lead role in the animated film Anastasia, which met with good reviews and box office success, and she and Matthew Broderick played a pair of jilted lovers bent on revenge in the black comedy Addicted to Love, giving Ryan a female lead at least superficially different from her usual roles. In 1998, she starred in two films. City of Angels (an American remake of Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire) drew positive reviews and earned nearly $200 million worldwide. You've Got Mail, reteaming Ryan with Hanks, earned her a third nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical and made more than $250 million worldwide. She also appeared in 1998's Hurlyburly with Sean Penn.

Ryan's first film of the 2000s was Hanging Up, a Diane Keaton-directed family comedy-drama about a trio of sisters who bond over the approaching death of their curmudgeonly father. Also starring Keaton, Lisa Kudrow and Walter Matthau, the film adaptation of Delia Ephron's 1995 novel received poor reviews from critics.

The same year, Ryan was cast in the action thriller Proof of Life with Russell Crowe, directed by Taylor Hackford. In the film, she portrayed the distraught wife of a kidnapped engineer, played by David Morse, while relying on a resourceful troubleshooter who makes a profession of dealing with international bandits. While the film became a lukewarm critical and commercial success, grossing $63 million worldwide, it garnered much reportage in the tabloid press in association with Ryan and Crowe's affair. Stephen Holden, film critic for The New York Times, did not think the film worked well and opined that the actors did not connect.

A year later, she once again returned to her romantic comedy roots with Kate & Leopold (2001), alongside Hugh Jackman. A film about a British Duke who travels through time from New York in 1876 to the present and falls in love with a successful market researcher in the modern New York, the James Mangold-directed film received a mixed-to-positive response, with Lael Loewenstein of Variety summing it as "a mostly charming and diverting tale". At a total gross of $70 million, it would be Ryan's highest-grossing film of the decade.

In 2003, Ryan broke away from her usual roles, starring alongside Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Jane Campion's erotic thriller film In the Cut. Co-producer Nicole Kidman had originally been cast in the lead, but the actress eventually dropped out after five years of development, leaving the role to Ryan, who appeared nude in a lengthy and rather graphic love scene for the first time in her career. Although her image-conflicting depiction earned Ryan and the film much media attention, the film failed with critics and grossed only $23 million in theaters. While promoting In the Cut on Michael Parkinson's talk show Parkinson, the actress was offended by the host's questions regarding filming nude scenes, appearing disinterested, delivering one-word responses, and suggesting that Parkinson end their interview when asked what she would do in his position. The interaction is considered to be one of the most infamous in talk show history. Three years after the interview aired, Ryan explained that she felt Parkinson was berating her for performing nudity and had attempted to disagree with his views respectfully. Parkinson eventually apologized for losing his temper in 2021, but maintained that Ryan's behavior "played a part in it too".