Meg Ryan Interview: Isn't She Romantic?

Fresh from her new romantic comedy, she talks about being funny (it's easy), being single (it's fine, thanks), and her quest for true spirituality.

A Profound Sweetness

It can't be easy playing America's sweetheart all of the time. You've got to be nice, but you can't be a pushover. You've got to be smart, but you can't be too brainy. You've got to be beautiful, but not too sexy, please. Most of all, you've got to be certain about the transforming power of love. After all, millions of moviegoers count on the notion that if you can find romance, maybe they can as well.

So when Meg Ryan's latest film, Kate & Leopold, arrived in the theaters, hopeful romantics -- and plenty of hopeless ones too -- breathed a sigh of relief. The movie puts Ryan right where many people love her best, as the wary but optimistic female lead in an old-fashioned romantic comedy. Kate & Leopold marks Ryan's return to the genre after a two-year absence, during which she made Proof of Life, a dark thriller about a woman whose husband is kidnapped by South American rebels. And it comes on the heels of the most dramatic period of her real life, the breakup of her marriage to Dennis Quaid, her husband of nearly a decade.

Happily, though, Meg Ryan the actress hasn't lost her touch -- and Meg Ryan the woman hasn't lost her faith. Ryan's Kate is a stressed-out executive with no time for men, until she meets Leopold, a 19th-century duke transported through time, played by Hugh Jackman.

Offscreen, Ryan, 40, says she's more at peace than ever. She's content right now to just hang out with the man in her life, her son, Jack, 9. Yes, she still believes in love, and yes, she'd like to have more kids. But later. Because she's perfectly happy on her own.

To interview the woman born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra, we called on author Sara Davidson, who's written about women, spirituality and the joys of an unexpected personal romance.

Ryan confirms she's more than just the sum of her characters -- not that we ever really doubted that. She's a doting mother, a harried single parent, an amicable ex-spouse, a devoted friend, a spiritual seeker and, as she discovered anew last fall, a patriot. She's naturally funny and an optimist. For those last two, especially, her timing couldn't be better. So, like the woman said in the deli scene in When Harry Met Sally, we'll have what she's having.

Davidson: In these dark times, do you think we need films to make us laugh?
Ryan: I think we need anything that's going to enliven spirit. I was so grateful when, after the eleventh, I finally saw something on TV that really made me laugh. I think it was a commercial, but I was so grateful to be laughing.

Davidson: Is being funny something you have to work hard at?
Ryan: No. I'm funny. I'm just a funny person. But I think I'm really tuned into the rhythm of this particular genre -- romantic comedy.

Davidson: Your latest movie, Kate & Leopold, is a movie about...
Ryan: The transporting power of love, and gentility and chivalry and how we could use some of that. What's unique about this movie is that the sweetness is so profound. And it doesn't apologize for its sentiment. Jim Mangold [the director] wanted to make a movie that was funny and -- it sounds really woo-woo to say -- you just feel the love coming off the screen at you.

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