Meg
Ryan
Born
Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra in Fairfield, Connecticut, Meg
Ryan, 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 Ryan, 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 Ryan 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 Ryan 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, Meg 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, Meg Ryan relocated to Los
Angeles to film the short-lived series Wildside. Undismayed by the
failure of the small-screen effort, Meg 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. Meg Ryan
and Edwards' ultimately tragedy-tinged fictional romance translated
into a short-term real-life relationship.
In 1989, Meg Ryan 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 Meg
Ryan 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 Meg 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 Meg 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
Meg 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.
Meg 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, Meg 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 Meg 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.
Meg Ryan is now working on
Hanging Up, a film that tells the story of three sister after te
death of their father.
