Curiously, the role of Annie Reed in Sleepless in Seattle got Ryan far from immediately. She was the sixth choice of producers – before her role was offered to Julia Roberts, Kim Basinger and Michelle Pfeiffer, but all of them refused.
More serious roles
After the success of Sleepless in Seattle, Meg Ryan turned down a role in the cult thriller Silence of the Lambs. Instead, she decided to focus on the genre that brought her fame – romantic comedies.
However, in 1996, the actress felt that she wanted to try herself in a different role. So, in the military drama Courage in Battle, Ryan played alongside Denzel Washington and Matt Damon, performing a much darker and serious role.
The film, released in 1996, was a box office hit, and at the time it seemed that Meg Ryan just doesn’t have failures.
The year 1998 became one of the most successful in her career. In the romantic drama City of Angels with Nicolas Cage, she again conquered the audience, and the film collected almost $ 200 million at the box office.
In the same year 1998, Meg Ryan received another role that became a landmark in her career, when she again teamed up with Tom Hanks in the film Here’s a letter to you. This film, set in an era when email and the internet were just beginning to enter our lives, is about two competitors who fall in love with each other after starting an email correspondence without knowing the real identity of the person they are talking to.
Meg received her third Golden Globe nomination for the role, and The New York Times wrote:
‘Ms Ryan plays her role with ease and conviction, while keeping it fresh, with a minimum of cute fidgeting and plenty of warm chemistry with Mr Hanks.’
It was the perfect way to end a golden decade for the actress!
However, if the 90s were a time of success for Meg Ryan, the 2000s were much more difficult for her. She started the new decade with several unsuccessful films, and her ‘know-it-all girl-next-door’ image came under criticism, while her personal life became the centre of public attention.
When she starred alongside Russell Crowe in Proof of Life, rumours of an affair between them began. At the same time, Meg and her husband Dennis Quaid announced their separation in 2000.
During this turbulent period in her personal life, Ryan was heavily criticised by the tabloids for rumouredly dating Russell Crowe while married. Her behaviour didn’t fit the public perception of her “girl next door” image, and of course the affair was a front page headline story.
Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe
Few people knew that her marriage to Dennis Quaid was broken long before the actress started dating Russell Crowe.
Their marriage was often portrayed as a fairytale of love, a perfect Hollywood union, but that was far from the truth.
“It was a great story. But what wasn’t part of that story was the reality of my marriage for nine years. Dennis wasn’t faithful to me for a long time, and that was very painful. I found out a lot of things after I got divorced,” Meg Ryan told InStyle Magazine in 2008.
According to Meg Ryan, her romance with Russell Crowe had nothing to do with her divorce from Dennis Quaid.
Meg Ryan explained that while Russell Crowe was present at the end of her marriage to Dennis Quaid, he was not the cause of the breakup. “I think he was hurt too, but Russell didn’t ruin our marriage. He was definitely there at the end, but it wasn’t his fault,” she said and continued:
“The public and the press didn’t get involved until later. The reasons for our breakup had nothing to do with a third person.”
Her ex-husband, Dennis Quaid, was certainly not thrilled with Meg’s comments years after their high-profile divorce.
‘It’s been eight years, and I find it hard to believe that Meg continues to publicly retell and rewrite the story of our relationship,’ he told the New York Daily News.
Although Meg Ryan called their relationship a ‘very unhealthy marriage,’ Dennis Quaid remembers their union with warmer feelings.
‘Of course I still love her,’ he told the Independent. – ‘I’m very attached to her and we had a lot of fun together. We had 13 good years. We had a child, we shared a lot: she made my life.”
Meg Ryan’s son
Although Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid have separated, they will always have a special bond because of their son.
Their son, Jack Quaid, was born in 1992, and now, at the age of 29, he has become an actor, following in his parents’ footsteps. Jack made his film debut in The Hunger Games and then went on to star in various TV series and films.
After her most turbulent period in life when she went through a high-profile divorce, Meg Ryan took a three-year break from her acting career. She decided to focus on her family, and it seems that she and her son Jack have a strong relationship. For example, in 2015, they worked together when Meg took on the role of director and directed Jack in the film Ithaca.