Meg Ryan can make wanting a stranger seem almost sensible. We value the alertness and comic timing behind her romantic optimism, even when the screenplay asks us to accept more than we should.
Fi1m perspective
In Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Meg Ryan's Annie Reed pins her romantic hopes on a man she does not know. Ryan's alertness keeps Annie engaging when the premise could easily make her tiresome. We found ourselves rooting for her because the comic timing lets us enjoy that hopeful foolishness without having to approve of it. There is skill in making such a precarious part worth following, and this is the Ryan we value most.
Her breakthrough in When Harry Met Sally... (1989) established the romantic-comedy lead that the Nora Ephron collaborations developed through the 1990s. You've Got Mail (1998) paired her again with Tom Hanks under Ephron's direction. It is easy to describe Ryan as charming and stop there, as though the timing takes care of itself. Her vulnerability keeps that optimism from becoming smug. In Sleepless in Seattle, those qualities keep Annie's hopes interesting even when the script has given her a less secure part than it has given Hanks.
That film also shows the limit of what an actor can repair. Ephron keeps Ryan and Hanks apart, giving each room to work while avoiding some awkward questions about how these people might get on together. The attraction remains largely an imagined one, and even a performance this engaging cannot tell us how a couple would manage the ordinary business of being together. Coincidence also has rather too much work to do, however persuasively Ryan encourages us to go along with it.
Her departures from romantic comedy began well before she moved into directing. When a Man Loves a Woman (1994), Courage Under Fire (1996) and In the Cut (2003) took her into dramatic parts, the last of these meeting resistance from audiences and critics used to her romantic-comedy image. Ithaca (2015) was her directing debut; What Happens Later (2023), which she wrote, directed and starred in opposite David Duchovny, returned her to romantic comedy. Start with Sleepless in Seattle, if you can forgive a romance arranged so busily by coincidence.
Biography
Meg Ryan is an American actress. Born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra on 19 November 1961 in Fairfield, Connecticut, she began her career with a role in the 1981 film Rich and Famous and appeared in the soap opera As the World Turns from 1982 to 1984.
She gained wider attention with supporting parts in Top Gun (1986) and Innerspace (1987). Her performance as Sally Albright in When Harry Met Sally... (1989) brought her a Golden Globe nomination and established her in romantic comedies.
Ryan starred in further successes including Sleepless in Seattle (1993) as Annie Reed, You've Got Mail (1998) and Kate & Leopold (2001). She made her directorial debut with Ithaca (2015), in which she also appeared.
