Meg Ryan: A fake orgasm as a career springboard

The orgasm scene from "Harry and Sally" (1989) is one of the most famous in film history and made US actress Meg Ryan the big star of the romantic comedies of the 1990s.

Ryan played Harry Burns in the film Sally Albright and actor Billy Crystal (73) - two friends who eventually fall in love. At one point in the film, Crystal's character states that he doesn't think any of the women he's slept with have ever faked an orgasm, and Sally proves him wrong by staging a convincing climax in the middle of a restaurant. .

The story behind the fake climax

The relationship comedy by director Rob Reiner (74) received five Golden Globe nominations and the screenplay by Nora Ephron (71) also received an Oscar nomination. The famous scene wasn't even in the script, as Meg Ryan revealed just a few years ago at the Locarno Film Festival, where she received the honorary award.

"We had room to improvise, and it should come across as funny. That's when I came up with the idea that instead of talking about it, I could just show it off," the Hollywood star said in 2018 about the origins of the scene, which she never did was embarrassing.

"America's Sweetheart"

After Harry and Sally, Meg Ryan advanced with films like Sleepless in Seattle (1993), When a Man Loves a Woman (1994), IQ (1994), Love Is Relative French Kiss" (1995), or "Email for You" (1998) to "America's Sweetheart".

"It was director Nora Ephron who reintroduced this old term and applied it to me," Ryan told the "Tagblatt" in a 2018 interview. "America's sweetheart! I remember thinking, crap, now I have a label. It's a cute one, but labels are extremely limiting."

Hot affair with Russell Crowe

At the latest, her affair of several months in 2000 with the Australian film star Russell Crowe (57), whom she met while filming "Signs of Life - Proof of Life" (2000), put an end to the unloved image. Because at that time Meg Ryan had been married to Hollywood star Dennis Quaid (67) since 1991.

In 2003 she told the Guardian: "This thing [her affair with Crowe, ed.] happened and I was all over the tabloids and I was walking through the lobby and everything stopped. People stopped talking and stared me. And then I got to the elevator and instead of breaking down and saying 'oh' I just started laughing," she recalled of that perhaps somewhat liberating time.

Divorce and career break

In 2001, Ryan and Quaid divorced. Much later, she cleared up the blame at the time: In 2008, Ryan told "InStyle" that Crowe had been unfairly involved in their marital problems: "I think he did a lot of damage. But Russell didn't break the marriage. He was definitely there in the end, but it wasn't his fault." Rather, she was a "wreck". "I ended up hurting him too. I couldn't have a long relationship, it wasn't the right time for it, so I got out," Ryan said of the end of the affair.

In the same interview, she also claimed that husband Dennis Quaid was also unfaithful to her: "It [her affair with Crowe] was a great story, but what wasn't in the story was the reality of my marriage. Dennis was with me for a long time unfaithful and that was very painful. I found out more about it after my divorce," said Meg Ryan.

And true to the motto "Once the reputation is ruined, life is quite unabashed", Meg Ryan also ventured into new genres professionally at the beginning of the noughties. But films like the erotic thriller "In the Cut - When Love Kills" (2003) flopped. The many negative reactions to the film, in which she played a teacher in the arms of a woman killer, surprised her, as Meg Ryan told the Swiss "Tagblatt". "It was only then that I realized that I had gotten stuck in people's minds in a very specific way and that this movie didn't fit that image at all. I guess we should have warned audiences, if you're expecting a romantic comedy, this is where you are not correct."

Your beauty secret

But it wasn't just her established image and turbulent love life that caused Meg Ryan's career to collapse. There was more and more speculation about beauty interventions. In an interview with the magazine "Gala" in 2008, she was unusually open about the beauty craze in Hollywood. "Everyone should do or not do what he or she thinks is right. But I find this constant questioning and guessing why a woman looks the way she looks downright indecent," said the then 47-year-old.

Just last weekend, the actress explained her beauty secret again: "I eat healthily, sleep a lot and drink two liters of water every day. I also train regularly and try to escape old age by sweating a lot," she said of the "Bild am Sonntag". " on the occasion of her 60th birthday.

60th birthday without fanfare

Meg Ryan was born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra on November 19, 1961 in Fairfield, Connecticut in the northeastern United States. On Friday she celebrates her 60th birthday. "There will be no big fanfare. Those times are behind me," she revealed to the Sunday newspaper. Her two children, Jack (29) - from her marriage to Dennis Quaid - and adopted daughter Daisy will be there along with a few friends.