(Credits: Far Out / David Shankbone)
Success in Hollywood can often be as fleeting as it is fickle, with Meg Ryan reduced to an afterthought in an instant when her mainstream career was declared over within the space of a couple of movies.
During the rom-com boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s, every rising star was after a piece of the action. Plenty of them got it, but there were few who benefitted anywhere near as much as Ryan, who was even dubbed ‘America’s Sweetheart’ for headlining a string of heartwarming hits.
When Harry Met Sally… was her first-ever leading role and earned her a Golden Globe nomination for ‘Best Actress – Musical or Comedy’. She followed it up with spiritual and thematic successors like Sleepless in Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail opposite Tom Hanks, French Kiss, City of Angels, and Addicted to Love, becoming the genre’s undisputed queen.
Of course, there were other parts that showed there was more to Ryan than falling in love, whether it was wartime thriller Courage Under Fire or mystery thriller Flesh and Bone, even if she missed out on what could have been her crowning achievement when she declined an offer to play Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs.
As unfortunate as it is to say, ageism has always been a problem in Hollywood, leaving Ryan at a crossroads at the turn of the millennium as she approached 40. She’d made enough rom-coms to last a lifetime, but 2000’s action thriller Proof of Life caused the wheels to wobble when the actor’s affair with co-star Russell Crowe overshadowed an already mediocre film.
It’s probably not a coincidence that her next credit took her back to familiar turf in Hugh Jackman’s Kate & Leopold, and her next picture after that couldn’t have gone much worse. The headlines surrounding 2003’s In the Cut were dominated almost entirely by Ryan’s nude scenes, and as queasy as the discourse was, it didn’t help matters that it was widely panned and barely made a dent at the box office.
The sports drama Against the Ropes tanked horrendously and fared even worse with critics when it was released the following year, and Ryan was suddenly left on the outside looking in. It would be another three years before she was in another movie, and she’s only made seven in the last 20 years.
When asked by The New York Times if she’d have felt differently about her career and exile from mainstream cinema had In the Cut or Against the Ropes fared better on the critical or commercial front, Ryan was in agreement. “It’s fair,” she said. “I think the feeling with Hollywood was mutual. I felt done when they felt done, probably.”
It’s a ruthless business, and Ryan felt that more than most when all it took was three bad movies in a four-year span to virtually eradicate all the goodwill she’d built up over the previous two decades. It isn’t fair, but that’s Hollywood.
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