Meg Ryan

Meg Ryan was born Margaret Mary Emily Hyra on November 19, 1961, in Fairfield, Connecticut. She studied journalism at New York University while pursuing acting work. An early television role was Betsy Stewart on the daytime soap opera As the World Turns, which she joined in 1982. Her film appearances in the 1980s included Top Gun (1986), in which she played Carole Bradshaw, the wife of naval aviator Nick “Goose” Bradshaw. She also appeared in Innerspace (1987) alongside Dennis Quaid, whom she married in 1991.

Ryan’s breakthrough came as Sally Albright opposite Billy Crystal’s Harry Burns in Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally... (1989). Written by Nora Ephron, the film follows two friends across years of conversations about love and friendship. Its famous diner scene ends with another customer saying, “I’ll have what she’s having.” Ryan received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. She reunited with Ephron for Sleepless in Seattle (1993), playing Baltimore journalist Annie Reed, who becomes intrigued by a widowed father played by Tom Hanks after hearing him on the radio. In You’ve Got Mail (1998), Ryan and Hanks played rival New York booksellers who unknowingly form an online relationship.

Her work was not limited to romantic comedies. In Courage Under Fire (1996), she portrayed Army helicopter pilot Karen Walden, whose actions during the Gulf War are investigated by a military officer played by Denzel Washington. She voiced the title character in the animated film Anastasia (1997). In City of Angels (1998), she played surgeon Maggie Rice opposite Nicolas Cage’s angel Seth. Jane Campion’s In the Cut (2003) cast her as Frannie Avery, a New York writing teacher drawn into a murder investigation. Ryan also starred opposite Hugh Jackman in the time-travel romance Kate & Leopold (2001).

Ryan made her feature-film directorial debut with Ithaca (2015), an adaptation of William Saroyan’s novel The Human Comedy. Set during World War II, it features her son Jack Quaid among its cast. She returned to directing with What Happens Later (2023), in which she and David Duchovny play former lovers stranded together at an airport by a snowstorm. Ryan co-wrote the screenplay with Steven Dietz and Kirk Lynn; the film draws on Dietz’s play Shooting Star. Her collaborations with Ephron also include Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), in which Ryan plays three different characters. Ryan and Dennis Quaid divorced in 2001; their son Jack has pursued an acting career.