New York Times fluff piece on Meg Ryan skirts around the issues that destroyed her career

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From the late ’80s through the ’90s, Meg Ryan shone about as brightly as any star in Hollywood. You know about her beloved string of romantic comedies — often written by Nora Ephron, often co-starring Tom Hanks. Less well remembered are her dramatic turns in the same era’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” “City of Angels” and “Courage Under Fire,” all of which were commercial successes. But the harsh reaction to her 2003 erotic thriller, “In the Cut,” a critical and box-office flop that was widely seen as a failed attempt to complicate her winsome image, as well as her growing frustration with fame, compelled her to step into a less public, far happier life. “I wasn’t as curious about acting as I was about other things that life can give you,” says Ryan, 57. She quietly made her directorial debut in 2015 with the World War II-era drama “Ithaca,” and last November, she became engaged to the musician John Mellencamp. “I wanted,” she says, “to live more.”

Actors often talk about how their roles let them explore feelings that they might not otherwise explore. In the time since you began acting less, have you had to adjust how you process emotions? I felt in a crazy way that, as an actor, I was burning through life experiences. Somehow I was a helicopter pilot or a journalist or an alcoholic.

Did you feel as if you hit a wall by burning through all those experiences? Or the blunter way of asking the question is: Where’d you go? My son, Jack,2 graduated from high school on a Friday or Saturday. I moved back to New York from Los Angeles on the following Monday. I was burned out. I didn’t feel like I knew enough anymore about myself or the world to reflect it as an actor. I felt isolated.

In Hollywood or in fame? In fame and in work. Ever get in a car — maybe it’s a superexpensive car — and the inside’s lovely, you can’t complain about it, but you can’t hear anything outside, because there’s so much metal? There’s so much between you and everything else. You’re at a disadvantage as a young, famous person because you don’t know who’s telling you the truth. I’m not complaining — there are so many advantages to being famous — but there are fundamental disadvantages for a part of your brain, your self, your soul. My experiences were too limited.

What’s something a person would be dishonest with you about? All of a sudden, I was told I needed a publicist and a manager and a lawyer. People fly in to help because you’re inexperienced, and someone says: “Don’t worry, I fixed the problem. Call me back.” Then suddenly you’re grateful to someone about solving a problem that you didn’t know you could even define. You’re doing things that people tell you that you need to do, but you don’t. You can function independent of all of that.

Why don’t more people who’ve achieved the level of attention and success that you achieved pull back? I don’t know about them, but I don’t feel like, naturally, I’m a performer. I knew I was being given opportunities and that there was certain music I could play as an actor. Certain things I could do. And I liked acting. I thought it was fun. But acting was a situation I was navigating.

Did you grow up wanting to be an actor? No, I never had that.

cont'd

You’ve done 30-something films, and about 10 could be deemed romantic comedies. But disproportionately those are the movies that did your best business. Were romantic comedies your true — I’m thinking of a word that I don’t know how to pronounce. Met — M-é-t-i-e-r? Strong suit?

Yeah, were romantic comedies your strong suit? Probably. I liked doing the alcoholic in “When a Man Loves a Woman”; I liked doing “In The Cut” but I was very happy going to a set that was about: How do you find the funny thing? I like that again now, working on a romantic comedy.

You’re writing one? Yeah. It’s at Working Title Films. I’ll just leave it at that. Getting the green light, David. My God. You feel like you’re jinxing it if you’re talking about it. Hopefully it’s for me to direct. I’m aware now that romantic comedies are confections, but they have construction. There’s architecture. It’s not something I was aware of back then.

What’s the last good romantic comedy you saw? “The Big Sick.” And I’m showing my daughter all kinds of romantic comedies. We did a Frank Capra thing over Christmas: “It Happened One Night” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

It’s easy to forget how good Jimmy Stewart was. So great! And Jean Arthur was a fantastic screen partner for him. There’s something very reticent about her as a performer, but she matched him so beautifully.

Charm is part of the appeal of romantic comedies, and — this is awkward to say to someone sitting across from me — you were extremely charming in those movies. As an actress, can you consciously generate charm? Do you have control over it? Real charm is probably innate. It’s just there or not. I can see it in people like Jennifer Lawrence or Emma Stone or Ryan Gosling. They probably aren’t able to manage it. Somebody told me once that she was done with being charming to men. I knew what she was talking about, because the charm was sort of manipulative.

I know you’re being humble, but you deflected my question. What about you and charm? I never thought about it like, “I’m going to turn the charm on.” Early on, I didn’t have a lot of acting technique. What I thought about was trying to tell the truth. The camera is a truth machine, and it knows everything you’re thinking, so you don’t have to pretend anything. You just have to make it true somewhere inside.

Rob Reiner has said he doesn’t think a studio would make “When Harry Met Sally . . . ” today because the business is so dominated by superhero movies. Are romantic comedies undervalued by Hollywood? As soon as they make money, they have value. But I don’t think that because things are tragic they’re deeper. Think about Nora Ephron. Her observation about romantic comedies is that they were commenting on their time in an intelligent way, but with the intention to delight.

Is it right that the Katz’s Delicatessen orgasm scene in “When Harry Met Sally . . . ” was your idea? It was in the script that Harry and Sally talk about the fact that women fake orgasms. Then, when we were rehearsing that movie, we had a lot of time to chat about the script, and I said that since Sally is such a behavioral character, she should fake an orgasm. That was my contribution.

Have you ever been to Katz’s aside from that time? No.

She actually looks normal there.

You and Nora seemed like a perfect sensibility match, but on some level, it’s funny that you, a gentile, were the muse of this classic Jewish New York character. Did she ever articulate what she saw in you? I would love to know. At times we would look at each other like, Hmm. But I was so interested in her. She wasn’t like anybody. She was different. On the sets with her, it wasn’t just about being directed. It was like, “How do you give a dinner party?” and “What do you cook?” and “What about a seating chart?” You were invited into her life, and it was so charming. I’m grateful we found each other. I also always appreciated that on a movie set she led with her intellect.

What’s a favorite memory you have of Nora? She was there when Steve Wynn put his elbow through a Picasso. She watched the whole thing! So I have an image of her being delighted by things that people would say or do. And I don’t know why, I think about having lunch with her at Balthazar, maybe two years before she died. I didn’t know she was sick, but she didn’t look well. I didn’t ask. I don’t know if she would have told me. I don’t think she would have. I regret not asking, “Are you O.K.?” Maybe she would have confided in me.

Were you happy with the work available to you as you got older? Would you have felt more compelled to keep exploring acting if those opportunities were good? I’m sure the same opportunities did not present themselves in my 40s that did in my 30s and 20s. I think the last movie I starred in was 10, 12 years ago. It might have been “The Women.” I get offers to do things now, but they’re not things I want to do. I have so much admiration for actors who have incredible imagination for life or have life experience that they can then bring to the audience. I don’t think I was one of those people. I felt like an unformed person.

How did that manifest itself? I felt like I was behind a window looking at my life. That had a lot to do with working so much. The only people you meet are on the set, and you’re waiting in your trailer, and you’re memorizing lines — I remember thinking, I want to have my own thoughts. Also it was hard to walk around anywhere. It was never about people being mean; it’s that I couldn’t move. I would sort of duck and cover, and that wasn’t what I wanted. Then my son came along in the middle of all that. I’d say to some of the people representing me at the time: “Guys, don’t leave me messages that say it’s an emergency. If something’s wrong with Jack, that’s an emergency. ‘The deal didn’t close’ isn’t one.”

I don’t mean this in a snarky way, but was the separation from Hollywood mutual? If “In the Cut” or “Against the Ropes” had been better received by critics or audiences, would you have felt differently about everything? It’s not a snarky question. It’s fair. I think the feeling with Hollywood was mutual. I felt done when they felt done, probably.

Was backing off from show business part of coming to terms with a fundamental ambivalence about your career that had always been there? Nora used to tell me, “Just because you have fame problems doesn’t mean you don’t have a problem.” I like the famous I am now: I walk into other people’s paparazzi photos, but I can also get a restaurant reservation.

Around when “Against the Ropes” came out in 2004, you alluded in an interview to obstacles that women in the movie business face. Can you be explicit about that? What were you butting up against? When I look back now, it was definitely easier to be the funny person rather than the pretty person, the sexy person. Not that I ever could be sexy, but I felt like that got into such a funky land. I didn’t want the problems.

She looks like Chelsea Handler in OP pic.

The problems of being a sex symbol? I never led with that. I felt it was dangerous because of the environment. If you’re a 25-year-old girl in Hollywood, you need to be aware of what’s out there. At the time, there was a self-perpetuating strata that wasn’t alerting girls to the problems. It’s good they’re being alerted now. I never had a man in a position of power play sexual politics. It got weird a couple of times, but I figured out a way out of the room. Sexuality in Hollywood is so complex because of all kinds of things: how women react to you, how men react to you, how wives react to you, how studio executives react to you. I don’t know if it was brave or cowardly of me to sort of bob and weave around the issue. But I know that when I did “In the Cut,” the reaction was vicious.

How did that affect the arc of your career? I feel like that might’ve been the last movie I did. I was surprised by the negative reaction. I loved the movie and loved that experience and loved Jane Campion. When I went to England and did press for that, there was a guy who had a talk show. His name escapes me.

Michael Parkinson.

Parkinson! I was shocked that he was saying, like, “How could you be naked?” I don’t think I handled it well. Since then, I’ve had publicists say to me, “You should’ve prepared your audience for your doing something different.” “In the Cut” was a sexual thing, and sex throws people. I’d never presented myself like that before; it was so different from my assigned archetype. Probably I had a very neutered image. Carrie Fisher was the one who said: “No, no, no. When you betray your archetype by doing a movie like that and by getting divorced — you can’t.” Yeah, “In the Cut” felt like a real turning point. When you have a moniker —

“America’s Sweetheart.” Which probably makes you cringe. It doesn’t allow for the full expression of a person. But that’s what movie stardom is. There’s a blankness required.

Aside from your work in “In the Cut,” which of your performances stand out now as pivotal in some way? “When a Man Loves a Woman.” It was a pretty amazing confluence of events. I was married to Dennis, and he was getting sober, and this movie came along. So in real life and in the movies I was understanding “What does codependent mean? What is alcoholism?” I went to Al-Anon meetings. I went to A.A. meetings. Because I was the alcoholic in the story, it gave me empathy. It was a cathartic role.

What have you learned about how power works for women in Hollywood? I don’t think I took advantage of the power that I had. If you have box-office power, you can create opportunities for yourself. That was a chit I’d earned, but I didn’t work it. Somewhere in the middle of my time in Hollywood, I did have a production company and produced movies, but it felt exhausting. I had a baby, and I was acting, and they were giving me scripts to produce in various stages of development when I was getting scripts to act in that were ready. I kept thinking: What is this thing about having it all? Why do we want that? Don’t we just want to be happy in our independent pursuits?

It is sort of baffling why are plastic surgery turned out so bad. You'd think with her money she'd have had the best doctors. Other cute girls from her generation aged better (Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock.)

I guess Meg had a child like face that didn't age right. I can't think of some other really child like looking actress of her age to compare her to. Ideas?

cont'd

There’s an anecdote you told years ago, in passing, about being in London when your relationship with Russell Crowe was a big tabloid thing. You mentioned walking into a hotel and having everyone stop and stare at you, then getting in an elevator and having this clarity about the emptiness of tabloid attention. Can you unpack that epiphany for me? That was another big turning point in my evolution. I’d never felt like I was all that concerned with what people thought of me, but then that story never got told right.

What story?

The story of how I was divorced or what the actual problems were. It’s a real gift when you know you can’t ever really manage an image or a story and you stop caring. I felt the effect, like I was the bad guy or whatever the story was. But I remember letting go of needing to correct anybody. Divorce is hard. Love is hard. All those things were so personal. They weren’t for mass consumption. The complexity of a life or a marriage is never going to exist in a headline or a tabloid. That was a freeing thing to know! Though fame has become so democratized now.

In what way? Even if you’re famous in just your office building or neighborhood, social media has given everybody the experience I had; more people are having the experience of cultivating other people’s opinions. Everyone is so happy on social media. It’s depressing.

How implicit or explicit was the pressure to look a certain way as you grew older?

The pressure was implicit. How you look — there’s so much judgment. You can’t win or lose. That’s an annoying thing, and you deal with it.

You’re engaged. How is the nature of love in middle age different from love at 25 or 35? What’s great about now is that John and I are so free to have fun. Maybe that freedom is about being a million years old. But I sometimes think relationships are for aliens. Who does it? Who can do it? I don’t know how any of us ever do.

I was listening to an interview John did with Howard Stern a few years back, and John said something like: “Meg Ryan hates me.” You and John dated off and on for years before getting engaged. Do you know what he was talking about? I have asked him that same question. I don’t know.

In this period when you haven’t been as busy with acting, what does an ideal day look like? Well, raising a kid takes a lot of time. But I’m lucky because I can go places like a TED conference. I can go to Cambodia and travel around. I’m writing. I’m hoping to direct. I have a passion for design. I take pictures.

Didn’t you take photos on a trip with Nora to a place called Dildo? I went with Carrie in 2005. She was hired by The New York Times! She picked Dildo, Newfoundland, just to go and write about it, and I took the pictures. There’s Dildo everything. I mean, really, they have a limited sense of irony about their town. Which makes it very funny.

And in addition to your romantic comedy, you’re working on a sitcom with Lorne Michaels? It’s not really a sitcom. I can’t believe NBC might do it, because it’s so odd. Right now I’d be producing. Maybe I’ll act in it. I don’t know. It’s a limited series, three seasons. A murder mystery. A comedy. A murder-mystery comedy.

You’re O.K. now with being understood by the public as a comedy star? Yeah, I appreciate that there are movies that I watch that make me feel comforted. I can watch a Nancy Meyers movie and feel, God, I love that kitchen. There are certain Coen brothers movies that I like —

The Coen brothers’ movies make you feel comforted? “Fargo.”

Oh, yeah, I feel good after I watch “Fargo.” “Barton Fink,” too.

Barton Fink ends up in hell! But there’s something about how good the Coens are as storytellers. They’re so smart, those guys. Anyway, I know that people say, “I watched ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ over and over when I was recovering from my hip operation.” That’s nice. Movies have funny places in people’s lives.

Never even nominated. Just saying.

[quote] when I did “In the Cut,” the reaction was vicious.

Never seen that one so I don't know if it was good for bad but I'd have said her affair with Crowe is what knocked her career off the rails. Not some quick nude scenes.

In the Cut is as bad as the reviews at the time said.

Ryan seems very intelligent.

For a quick moment I thought I mixed her up with someone else who got her career ruined by having an affair with Crowe. She had this America's Sweetheart image that got ruined by being branded as a hussy and in those days Hollywood didn't take chances with women right after they fell from grace.

What ruined her career was cheating on Dennis Quaid. I couldn't watch any movie she was in after that. It would have been like saying that what she did was okay. Many other people felt the same way.

Give me a fucking break, r15. Quaid was a notorious drunken, cheating asshole.

r16. The problem were the optics. She had the wholesome image and Quaid had no bad reputation in public.

Nevertheless.

One bad movie that nobody saw does not kill a career.

It was her home-wrecking affair with Russell Crowe, followed by ghastly plastic surgery, that did her in.

Yup. Crowe and the surgery. And I hate the "who me?? I never wanted to be an actress." disengenuous crap.

Exactly r20. Her ego can't admit that she got old, people saw her as a slut and the bad plastic surgery guaranteed she would never be A-list again.

She would have totally rebounded from the scandal and In the Cut if she hadn't had the plastic surgery. And the interviewer doesn't go there.

I still don't understand what she was trying to get done or what procedures could do this to someone.

[quote]And I hate the "who me?? I never wanted to be an actress." disengenuous crap.

Exactly. How can someone who started acting at 20 years old say that? I remember how cute was as Betsy on As the World Turns.

She has the same problem Mickey Rourke did. Some sort of filler procedure that ran amok.

Can't she find a good plastic surgeon to fix her mouth? Even in the NYT pic, you can still see the Joker mouth.

Maybe she needs to visit Melanie Griffith's surgeon for corrective procedures.

Does it concern her that she doesn't look anything like her younger self?

Just checked out Mel Griffiths Instagram. And her face is still wrecked af. That recent magazine cover must have had a shit load of photoshop.

I have to come out and say it. She is one of the ugliest white women I have ever seen, with or without surgery. Her 'acting skills' were non-existent. It's like they plucked this random woman from nowhere and put her in a couple of films — ghastly! And she also lacks any real depth to her, there's nothing there. She is extraordinarily lucky.

I couldn't be bothered to read the whole article, what does she do now for a living?

As other posters have said, what wrecked her career was the affair with Crowe followed by ghastly plastic surgery, not In The Cut. In the Cut flopped and there was talk about how she was miscast, etc but it wasn't THAT big of a deal then. It was a movie that came and went.

Dennis Quaid was a druggy mess but the general public thought he'd cleaned up and had been living on the straight and narrow since he'd married Meg - she was viewed as the good girl who'd put him back together, made a family man out of him, and everything was hunky-dory. So when she bailed on him with Crowe, it shocked people - it was so at odds with both her onscreen and offscreen image.

Also, back in her heyday she was notorious for accepting roles and then pulling out of a project at the last minute (Steel Magnolias is one example). That can't have helped her at all in the industry - there were probably plenty of people who were happy to see her go because she'd screwed them over at one point.

She also came off cold in other interviews, not just Parkinson. She was cold in her interview with Barbara Walters. I was surprised she agreed to do an interview with Wawa, who was known to pry into personal lives of celebrities.

[quote]I couldn't be bothered to read the whole article, what does she do now for a living?

She worked at Starbucks for a while and now is a toll collector at the Lincoln tunnel.................she was huge movie star and is estimated to be worth 45 million dollars. I don't think she needs to make a living. She made it already.

Thanks for the chuckle R31, LOL!

For having 'made it' she doesn't seem too happy with her life.

Even if Quaid was a mess, the public expected her to stand by her man and help him get through it instead of throwing herself at another man and being a tramp.

It must be hard to be her and have people constantly staring at her face wondering what happened. Her bad facial work has almost eclipsed her acting career.

R33 darling, that is not called "being a tramp". It is called putting 'me' first, which is what women should have been doing from the beginning of time.

@R34

[quote] ...have (idle) people (without a life or a decent job, or anything else to do for that matter) constantly staring at her face wondering....

There, I fixed it for you.

Around the time she did that movie with Matthew Broderick, she was giving interviews about how she hated her America's Sweetheart image.

She was so miscast in Courage Under Fire.

She was so average looking. What a lucky woman, she got to be a Hollywood star with her plain Jane looks. Another poster on this thread said she was extraordinary lucky and I totally agree. She should have behaved herself and appreciated her luck. She was a charity case and she ruined it by being a slutty bitch.

Nora had already begun to write about aging ("I Feel Bad About My Neck") before her untimely passing. I can't help but wonder if she would have turned out another great romantic comedy with a later in life Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks had she not passed away.

[quote] She should have behaved herself and appreciated her luck.

So true

Nora Ephron was a cheap woman.

I once saw her standing outside an off-Broadway theater trying to sell an extra ticket she had. A young woman said she'd take it. She only had forty dollars cash and Nora wanted sixty. This multi-millionaire made the girl go to an ATM and come back with the extra money.

nah r36

I'm sure everyone who knows her from the past and sees her now whether the be the most highly paid accomplished busy businessman or an unemployed coach potato think, wow what happened.

(you seem oddly triggered by this topic.)

I always got the bitch vibe from her. I know at one time she was estranged from basically her entire family. And it's not like it was a real screwed-up family. I mean, they had their issues (the parents divorced when Meg was in high school, and her mother moved out while the kids stayed with dad) but nothing dramatic. Yet she wasn't on speaking terms with her mother, or father, or brother, or younger sister... Sometimes the problem isn't with everyone else, sometimes you're the problem, Peggy.

Anyway, I don't know if she's made amends with her family. I hope so. But I never bought the images she projected, both on-screen and off-screen.

[quote]Nora Ephron was a cheap woman. I once saw her standing outside an off-Broadway theater trying to sell an extra ticket she had. A young woman said she'd take it. She only had forty dollars cash and Nora wanted sixty. This multi-millionaire made the girl go to an ATM and come back with the extra money.

The last time you wrote this horrid story YOU were the one who she asked to go to the ATM. Now it's some woman you "saw".

nope r44. I just witnessed it. And you have an odd definition of horrid.

(oh and MARY!)

[quote]I always got the bitch vibe from her.

I always found her totally charmless. Never understood her appeal. Bit like Julia and to a lesser degree Sandra. Odd how these dreary women have such mass appeal.

[quote]nope [R44]. I just witnessed it. And you have an odd definition of horrid.

NOPE - you said it was YOU.

It's FAKE news.

You can Mary me all you like.

Do you memorize the DL r47? Are you on the spectrum?

R41, LOL!

Holy fuck at OP’s NYT pic. Madame Tussauds is in the plastic surgery business?

From the National Enquirer [I know]:

[quote] The 57-year-old has never admitted to being nipped and tucked, but plastic surgeons — who have never worked with Meg — dished to ENQUIRER in the past about her butchered look. Dr. Yoel Shahar specifically commented on her rather plump lips. “The sides of her upper lip, they overfilled it and it looks funny, like a duck. “You can see the filler itself. Bumpiness across the upper lip — that’s not natural. Whatever she has had injected has to be reduced because that’s awful.”

[quote] Dr. Matthew Schulman also shared, “Her cheeks appear far too plump, the result of injectable fillers such as Juvederm or Restylane — or perhaps she had permanent cheek implants placed.”

[quote] Meg may have decided to lay off the plastic surgery before she says “I do,” the real question, though, is if there’s any chance at actually saving her face…

I watched the Parkinson episode live and he was horrible and patronising and dismissive to Trinny and Susannah who appeared before her, but they batted it off with good humour.

Then Meg Ryan came out and the snark continued but she took it very personally.

Parkinson has got a reputation as a misogynist. Worth watching an interview from the 70s when racist comedian Bernard Manning appears and was challenged by Jewish tv presenter Esther Rantzen. Parkinson just sat back and laughed at the racist jokes why Esther challenged slowly and politely.

I always confuse Meg Ryan and Melanie Griffith.

R52, and then they are surprised by Brexit. It was many years in the making.

[quote]Do you memorize the DL [R47]? Are you on the spectrum?

Gurl, NO! But I remember that story and little Mary's moved the goal posts and I've caught her out.

She looks much better then the last time I saw her, in the image at the OP. Just a couple of years ago she was looking monstrous. Looks like she's had some reparative work done.

Is she made up with her mother? I remember reading years ago she had disowned her mother, I think when she was married to the massive coke head Quaid. There was an article where her mother was quoted speaking about a family meal when Quaid was obviously very coked up having to leave the table every few minutes to go to the bathroom and then exiting still sniffing the powder up his nose.

Whoever fixed her face should be given a Pulitzer Prize for humanitarian contributions to society.

What on earth does she see in this old thing? He must have a piece the size of a baseball bat.

[quote]What on earth does she see in this old thing? He must have a piece the size of a baseball bat.

She's a gay man?

Something I don't understand about celebrities, is why they stay "engaged" for months and even years. Why wait, especially at Meg and John's age? What, are they planning a big white wedding?

You think straight women don't want some deep penetration too?

I always chuckle at Mellencamp with his "hey look at this small-town Indiana boy in the big town" persona. Seems he only dates supermodels and movie stars.

I love people who chuckle.

Touche, R64. Sometimes I chortle as well.

I used to know someone who ran a large concert venue and I asked her who was the biggest asshole- She said Without a doubt, John Cougar Mellencamp- and that his kids were little brats too.

That must have been Teddi?? lol

This was in the late 90's she told me this.

I thought the interview was good and she came across well. She also looks a lot better now but who knows with the trickery of photoshop?

Meg Ryan is full of it. She scooped up every second of her stardom with both hands and stayed in it till it petered out. Like they all do. You couldn't swing a dead cat in the early, mid 90s without seeing MR, she was huge. She even spawned a tv lookalike wannabe, (Helen Hunt).

Then, when she aged out & scandal pushed her out, she claims the 'I want to live an authentic life ' bullshit. She wanted it then and still wants it. Her face carving proves it. Why bother if you're at peace with the simple, lowkey life?

R59 straight women are a lot less demanding than straight and gay men. They tend to have low self-esteem, they could shack up with anyone

And don't forget the old codger's bank account as a factor.

I'd say that overall J.Q. Public didn't judge and weren't crushed about her relationship/affair with Crowe. Ryan and Quaid were apparently on the road to splitsville anyway. I've always interpreted the "scandalous," tarnished sweetheart fallout blather as malarkey for cretins to wag on about.

"When a Man Loves a Woman" with Andy Garcia was no better than a Lifetime movie for women.

[quote] Something I don't understand about celebrities, is why they stay "engaged" for months and even years. Why wait, especially at Meg and John's age? What, are they planning a big white wedding?

The other question is why do they even need to get married? Both are wealthy and past child-bearing years.

This is Nov, 2018. Looks like she got her nose revised from that hideous nose job she got, backed off a little on the botox (which was making all her features migrate to the center of her face) and fillers in the face. Lips are still tragic. She's starting to resemble Nicole Kidman:

She wasn't talented enough to do dramatic roles when she aged out of those stupid romcoms.

She never had a fanbase of gay men, which can make all the difference in an older actresses' career.

I've been doing some googling into the mystery of what she did to her face, exactly. It seems like a lift by the famous Dan Baker... who also did Madonna's first lift when she still looked good. This site almost always gets it right.

She was on the young side really - to need a facelift & it was too aggressive for her age.

Be best.

Meg v Parky

Every morning when she brushes her teeth, she looks up from the sink and sees a stranger in the mirror. It's almost like having Alzheimer's.

The reason she’s ashamed of having been on [italic]As the World Turns[/italic] is because she was on the same time as Danny Pintauro.

The far more talented Julianne Moore was never ashamed of her humble daytime roots.

She doesn’t look bad. She just doesn’t look like Meg Ryan.

Much better than I expected in R73’s pic. She was seriously horrifying for a while...

She actually looks like Olivia Newton John in r73's pic.

I thought of Cindy Williams when I saw the photo at r73.

She looks better at r73 but she seems to be hiding something behind her hair.

R66 if you google photos of Mellencamps children, sons Hud and Speck (I'm not making the names up) and daughter Teddi, one thing is immediately noticeable. They all look like nasty MEAN white trash. There's fun, goodhearted white trash who are unsophisticated but will give you the shirt off their backs and then there's mean, dead eyed white trash. His kids all look like the latter. Apparently the sons have had scrapes with the law too.

Does she like brutish men or something?

[quote][R66] if you google photos of Mellencamps children, sons Hud and Speck (I'm not making the names up) and daughter Teddi, one thing is immediately noticeable. They all look like nasty MEAN white trash.

I don't see it.

The sons seem nice.

Forget about Speck and Hud (really with those names, your fate is sealed), gimmie that hot felon Ty!

It's not all that surprising Mellencamp would name his kids for a rapist like Hud and a mass murderer like Speck ?

The daughter is some sort of Beverly Hills housewife while the sons are rowdy football players who keep getting arrested.

I remember now who she reminds me of, after her plastic surgery.

It's unbelievable that Speck and Hud are the sons of the gorgeous and elegant Elaine Irwin, once the face of Ralph Lauren. Mellencamp's white trash DNA must be powerful indeed.

I enjoyed her films. Personally, I never thought poorly of her for her affair with Crowe. Quail was no picnic.

The plastic surgery was too severe, and fillers at that time were not like what we have today. Regardless, then or now, plastic surgery is always a huge gamble. A facelift can look fantastic on your best friend, and look horrible for you, even with the most experienced and skilled surgeons at the helm. It’s all about the individual’s skin. A good way to gauge results? Look at a parent, an aunt, uncle, or sibling who has had plastic surgery. Their results can give you a better indication as to how it will look on you.

[quote] Quail was no picnic.

Clearly, she has a fetish: she's fucked Quail, Crow, and Cougar.

Thanks for the laugh, R97.

She won the lottery, pretty much.

And lost it.

Hope she invested well.

Thanks for the laughs, r96, and r97! I love making mistakes here, because of people like you.

In the Cut didn’t immediately end her career, but it certainly contributed to its end.

When it came out, she was coming off of flops Hanging Up, Proof of Life, and Kate & Leopold. That’s 4 flops in a row, and she was 40. Against the Ropes got a wide release and became flop number 5. She never appeared in a wide release film distributed by a major studio after that.

It's difficult to guess who is reponsible for the overall badness of the transformation. She obviously wanted huge caterpillar lips and a great surgeon (which she could afford) would have advised "NO" and she would have overruled, or found a surgeon willing to do that. There are plenty. The joker mouth was a travesty however. The cheek implants were badly done.

[quote] 2003...her growing frustration with fame, compelled her to step into a less public, far happier life.

By 2003 she was in her 40's and way too old to be a Hollywood ingenue. She was frustrated with her inability to get movie roles not to mention those tragic plastic surgeries. Plastic being the operable word in her case.

I can’t stand her.

What happened to teddi mellencamp mentoring tori spelling?

I think the plastic surgery was a major factor, what roles can you do looking like that? Jessica Lange had horrible surgery at around the same time but it settled and she got Ryan Murphy and AHS. And she was older. Mehg also doesn’t sound like a nice person or a person in peace with herself. This interview is convolued to make her appear interesting. She is not.