Behind her, the sky and sea are dark. Sitting here, at a beachside restaurant in Santa Monica, Meg Ryan seems so unlike any previous image of her, it’s as if we’ve been watching someone else all these years. As she discusses her life, and her new film, the erotic thriller “In the Cut,” which debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last week, she’s forthright and thoughtful. Her hair is darker, her voice deeper, her manner surprisingly sexy. “You’re not the first person to suddenly see that,” says Edward Zwick, who directed her in “Courage Under Fire.” Still, it’s a bit of a shock. “Well,” he counters with a laugh, “do you believe what you see in the movies?”
Yes, we did. Ryan’s biggest hits–“When Harry Met Sally,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” “You’ve Got Mail”–etched her into the national consciousness as a latter-day Doris Day, an Ivory-clean urbanite, all snappy patter and pure intentions. The persona proved indelible. Of the 11 dramas Ryan made after 1990–double the number of comedies–only “City of Angels” made more than $60 million domestically. In most interviews during the last decade, she revealed little. She told stories about her marriage to Dennis Quaid, her ranch in Montana, her love of her son, Jack. In the absence of contrary evidence, she remained who we wanted her to be: admirable, uncontroversial, adorable.
Her 2000 romance with Russell Crowe accomplished what no role had: it obliterated her halo. The public reaction was brutal. “Meg Ryan’s cuckolding of her husband is shameful and heartbreaking,” read a letter in People magazine that year. “As for the suggestion that all this won’t affect her box-office popularity, this is one former fan who won’t be paying to see any more Meg Ryan movies,” said another. Tough crowd. No one got that riled up when Julia Roberts hooked up with a married man, or when J. Lo dumped her hubby and got busy with Ben. But then, neither of those women was saddled with upholding the wholesome goodness of American womanhood. “What I did, in the end, was betray an archetype,” Ryan says now. “If your public character is simplistically defined, any complexity that you add to it, any sexuality, any darkness–maybe it’s just irritating to people.”
If anyone is still clinging to some virginal ideal of Ryan, “In the Cut” should finish the job. The initial version was so graphic that director Jane Campion (“The Piano”) had to delete certain shots to get an R rating. Not much, Campion says: “Just a thrust or something. I’m very happy if people get lovely, sexy feelings while they’re watching the film, but that’s exactly the sort of nonsense the [ratings] board is trying to stop.” Ryan stars as Frannie, a literature professor disenchanted with romance, who finds herself drawn to a coarse New York detective (Mark Ruffalo) investigating the murder of a young woman. Adding to the erotic tension, Frannie suspects the detective may, in fact, be the killer. Asked why Frannie would find a dangerous man attractive, Ryan says simply, “Love is dangerous.”
Before the film opens next month, much will be written about Ryan’s nude scenes. While they are shocking, what’s more intriguing is how silent her performance is. She probably says more in a single scene of “When Harry Met Sally” than she does in this entire film. “I had every insecurity you could have,” she says. (Ryan actually had to audition for the role after Nicole Kidman dropped out.) “I was scared of the sexuality, and I was scared I couldn’t be the kind of actor who did nothing,” Ryan says. “I’m not a likely choice for that kind of material, and Jane took a huge chance on me.” While reviews out of Toronto were mixed–praising the erotic elements but finding the thriller aspects implausible–Ryan drew solid notices. Here’s Daily Variety: “Quiet, thoughtful and never displaying a need to be liked, Ryan shows a tough, rigorous aspect of herself that’s new to films.”
And not unlike the woman herself. “I’m so much more sure of myself, about how much I can love my life, how much I can be the architect of it,” she says. Her trial in the court of popular opinion, it turns out, wasn’t for naught. “I was hurt by it, but in a weird way, all of that was very liberating,” she says. “Some part of you just felt like a rebel, because you had this secret truth. I’m never going to explain why my marriage broke up. It fell apart from the inside. It was devastating. Awful. So awful, in fact, that public perception isn’t something you think about much until later.”
Hollywood did think about it, though. They thought about it when her movie with Crowe, “Proof of Life,” made only $33 million in the United States. And they really thought about it after her 2001 romantic comedy, “Kate and Leopold,” opened at less than $10 million. She had just turned 40, and if you asked studio executives about her at the time, most told you that they didn’t think she was a bankable movie star anymore. Whether “In the Cut” forces them to re-examine that opinion is a false premise, from Ryan’s perspective. She never felt blackballed in the first place, she says, and that whole discussion is beside the point. “I’m probably too old to do romantic comedies,” she says. “I mean, who wants to see me trying to decide about a guy? I want to do more complicated movies anyway, smaller movies anyway, so I’m trying to catch up with myself.”
That makes perfect sense, says Diane Keaton, who directed and costarred with Ryan in “Hanging Up.” “Why would you want to be cute at 40, number one?” she says. “Why would you want to hold onto something that you can’t possibly sustain? When you’ve succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams the way Meg has, there are other things more interesting in life than holding onto that. It’s not that much fun, to be honest.”
Fun for Ryan these days means writing and taking photographs. She’s single, OK with that and is spending some extra time with Jack. “Do you want to see a picture?” she asks. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a black-and-white portrait she took of her 11-year-old son. (He’s handsome, of course. The photo’s good, too.) She’d like to try her hand at directing, but there’s no real rush.
It’s late, and the restaurant is nearly empty. She hangs out a while, recommending Philip Roth novels, chatting about Dylan Thomas–and reflecting on the past few years. “This isn’t something that happened to me,” she says. “I wish all of it had happened in a much tidier way, I wish my son had parents who were together, I wish a lot of things were just neater, you know?” She pauses. “But it isn’t something I’m a victim of. I could have made a lot of different choices, and I regret that I didn’t, but I’ve sort of forgiven myself for that stuff, too.”
