Born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra in Fairfield, Connecticut,
Meg, 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, 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 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 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, 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, Ryan relocated to Los Angeles to film the short-lived
series Wildside. Undismayed by the failure of the small-screen effort,
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. Ryan and Edwards' ultimately tragedy-tinged
fictional romance translated into a short-term real-life relationship.
In 1989, Ryan's 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 Ryan's 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 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
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 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.
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, 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 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, Kevin Spacey, and
Chazz Palminteri
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Biography