- At 15, separated from her mother, who, according to Ryan, left her husband
and children to pursue an acting career in Manhattan. ("It's something I
never talk about . . . but either you can go inside yourself and say,
It's just going to be me, or you can flail around a lot and cause
yourself and other people a lot of pain. You can't blame anyone else,
finally. It's all your own creation - up here in your head, anyway -
how you're going to deal with something, how you're going to go on.
You have to figure out your most peaceful path. But I do remember feeling,
O.K., it's just going to be me right now. It was really fucking
scary.")
- Majored in journalism at New York University. ("I think part of the
reason I wanted to be a writer was that I liked the idea of distancing
myself from anything that was emotional . . . . Part of my impetus to
write was about objectifying experiences.")
- First acting job: two-year stint as the leading ingenue on the daytime
drama As the World Turns. Film debut: Candice Bergen's daughter
in George Cukor's Rich and Famous. ("It was my first time out, and
I had no idea who Cukor was. I just remember him screaming at everyone,
'Don't act! Stop acting! Just come through the door!' Then he'd
nod off and his teeth would fall out.")
- Met Quaid while filming Innerspace (they also made D.O.A.
and Flesh and Bone together) and married him a few years later,
in 1991. ("I remember the first time I saw his abs . . . . We were making
Innerspace, and he had to do a scene in which he didn't have on
any clothes. He was in a trailer getting body makeup on. All of us were
staring at his abs and going, 'Is there a sound those things make?'")
- Among her other films: Top Gun, The Presidio, The Promised Land,
[sic] The Doors, When a Man Loves a Woman. Estimated
domestic box-office gross: $608 million. ("I'm not sure being in hits is
anything to aspire to. But I'm lucky, because I really like doing comedies,
and they're usually an easier sell than a drama. I'm not a snob about it
. . . . In fact, I think a television sitcom would be a great thing to do.
I think it would be really fun to make your day all about finding the
joke.")
- One son, two-year-old Jack Henry Quaid. ("He's got this little face of
angst that he makes when the bones and the muscles in his face
conspire. We think it's one of his cutest expressions.")
- Production-company name: Prufrock. ("I always liked the idea of 'The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' because to me it's just a meditation on
life, from whatever perspective. I also feel that that's kind of
what maybe movies are - different meditations on parts of life.")
'I know I shall disappoint some people, but I am rather embarrassed
to have written 'Prufrock' now," T. S. Eliot once told an audience that
had come to hear him read in New York City. "I feel it's rather exposing
an adolescent personality.
Ryan, whose adult allure is redolent of adolescence, has, to paraphrase
"Prufrock," forced two moments of her offscreen life to their crises with
a well-honed maturity. She refused to marry Quaid unless he kicked a
cocaine addiction, and her role as daughter has been superseded - severely
so - by that of wife and mother. A few years ago, her own mother, Susan
Jordan, initiated a very public airing of what still remain very private
matters. Until now, Ryan has steadfastly refused to engage her mother in
a public discourse over their split. Susan and her second husband,
journalist Pat Jordan, have expressed their side of things, however, in an
interview with a British tabloid reporter as well as on the syndicated show
Inside Edition. Moreover, Pat Jordan, after peddling the story to
several publications, finally made a sale to Chris Whittle's Special
Report magazines. In that article, he related a version of private
family events that purposefully paint Ryan as a rather unstable, ungrateful
daughter. Susan Jordan is even writing a book about her life's experiences.
Yet didn't this seemingly unalterable breach start much sooner, on that day
when Ryan, as a 15-year-old, wept as she watched her mother drive away from
her life?
"I feel like every now and then I could just come right out and say exactly
what these people are capable of," Ryan tells me, speaking out for the
first time about the situation. "But then it turns into a Roseanne-type
thing. It's useless . . . . I don't have real anger or resentment toward
these people. I'm just really happy to be away from them. It's the only
peaceful way for me to be. They're very clear about why I don't talk to
them - they're not being honest about this. It's a very long story. It's
32 years of stuff with this woman . . . . The thing I want to be clear about
is that it has nothing to do with something that happened when I was 15.
I'm over it. It's this long-running personality, character thing."
"I'm not very clear about why she doesn't talk to me. I'm not clear
at all. The book I'm writing is not about my relationship with my
daughter,"
Ryan's mother insists, though Pat Jordan has written in a letter to
US magazine that Susan will finally set "the record straight in her
own book about her relationship with her daughter."
"My book is about overcoming breast cancer, which I had 17 years ago,"
Susan Jordan continues. "It in large part centers around the stress that
I suffered when I really had to leave my children. I've not said
this before - I don't think Peggy knows about this," she says, using the
name she has always called Meg. "My husband told me when I told him I
wanted to have a divorce that he could not support the children or the
house if he had to be the one to leave it. He said, 'I can't afford to
rent an apartment for myself and support you and the children, so their
whole lifestyle is going to be ruined.' That's why I left -
honestly." (Although Susan Jordan says she has never spoken of these
things, this version of events has been reported before, namely in a 1994
Redbook article.)
"That's one of the things I'm writing about. The separation from them
for those two years was so critical and terrible that I ended up with
breast cancer, and that's what I'm writing about - that cancer is really
caused by how you react to things that happen to you," Jordan says.
"It took two years for me to get the job that I finally got as an English
teacher at Choate Rosemary Hall. They gave me a house, and at that point
I was able to get my two youngest children back . . . . the rumor that I
abandoned my children to pursue an acting career in New York is totally
false," she insists, thought she does admit to auditioning for commercials
and making one for Hills Brothers coffee during that time.
"I have sought over and over to talk this through with my mother and Pat,"
claims Ryan, who is somewhat closer to her father, a retired high-school
math teacher. "And I have been put off over and over. I just think,
finally, talking about this in public solves nothing and only exacerbates
the problem. I think they are stoking the conflict for profit."
"I'm sorry they feel that way," says Susan. "Of course that's not really
true. I never shared anything really, until 1992, two years after Peggy
just refused to talk to me anymore. I couldn't understand. All I was
saying to her was, Gosh, I'm afraid Dennis might have a problem . . . .
Maybe she felt I had threatened her image in some way. Here she was,
engaged to a man who has a drug problem - what does that do to America's
sweetheart? I was concerned for her. I like Dennis very much.
Did."
"This is a very convenient story for them to tell, but it's not true. The
one thing I want to make clear is that this has nothing to do with my
husband or his behavior," says Ryan. "All of that is very hurtful to
Dennis. It has nothing to do with him. It is also hurtful to me too. I
can't talk to people who are willing to hurt me like that."
"Your mother had breast cancer 17 years ago," I tell her. "If she dies
without you two reconciling, will you suffer regret for the rest of your
life?"
Ryan takes a long pause. Sighs. "I think about that, actually," she
finally says. "I wonder about it. But I don't have the answer to that."
"Can you ever trust her again?"
"That's a big question. It's something I think about a lot. I don't
really know."
Is forgiveness still possible?
Jordan: "There is always hope."
Ryan: "There is always hope."
'Meg's character in French Kiss is trying to create a safe
place in a world that's really hard," director Lawrence Kasdan tells me,
explaining why she was so attracted to this, her latest romantic romp.
"She has to redefine her ideas about that and sort of open herself up to
some of the chaos that life has. Some of that is bad; some of it is good."
"Meg's approach to all the comedies she's done has been very serious,"
says Tom Hanks. "I think she is exploring all sorts of themes, and that's
where that perkiness thing becomes a subterfuge . . . . When she chooses
her more serious role, she's rooting around in her own attic in the same
way that she does the comedies. There is no small amount of emotional
and intellectual investment concerning what the characters are going
through. I think that's why her comedies are slightly elevated in stature.
It's one thing to say you're going to play the alcoholic in When a Man
Loves a Woman, but when I saw it, I thought she went much deeper than
I could ever have imagined."
The emotional roller coaster she experienced in the early part of her
relationship with Dennis Quaid must have been rich source material for that
acclaimed portrayal. Later, as Quaid went through his first stages of
sobriety, Ryan also had to weather many changes that were occurring as the
two of them began to realign their priorities. "Meg has a lot of depth and
range - in her profession as well as in her person," Quaid tells me. "She's
a deep thinker in that she questions her every motive and action."
"Were you afraid of losing her when you were trying to get sober?"
"She stayed in there and stuck it out with me. It was a big test in life -
on me and on her and on the relationship - but we really loved each other
enough to hang on in there. We've been together about eight years, and
people go through all different stages. People change, and we've
been able to change along with each other."
"I'm always moved when I run into two people who've managed to maneuver
through life and still maintain the ability not only yo love but to be
loved," I tell him.
"Well, I know for my part I have," Quaid says, breaking into robust
laughter. "I can't speak for her. I know, for my part, I ain't lettin' go!"
"Every day I'm surprised that Dennis and I are still together," Ryan admits.
"But Dennis and I both come into this bringing something to the party.
Neither of us is the kind of person that thinks the other person is going to
make us feel one way or the other. We're very intact - separately -
so that when we come together it's something else."
"How long has he been sober?"
"Five years," she states matter-of-factly. "My feeling was twofold when
Dennis first told me about the cocaine: I was really angry then amazed by
how brave he was to tell me."
"You never did drugs with him?"
"No. Well, I smoked pot with him."
"Did you think it was his problem only, or that it was also yours?"
"Oh, I knew that it was my problem, too. I went, What is the matter with
me? Why didn't I see it?"
"Cocaine may harden one's heart, but it makes one, well, less hard in other
places," I venture. "If you were intimate with him - and I assume you were
- how could you not know he was snorting coke?"
"That's never been a problem with Dennis," Ryan declares, laughing and
setting me straight about Quaid's sexual prowess.
"Seriously, though, when you fall in love with an addict and he becomes
sober, how do you then stay in love with someone who has changed so much?"
I ask. "Don't you have to fall in love all over again, with a new person?"
"I was in therapy every day," she explains. "I remember going to one
of my first Al-Anon meetings, and the thing that hit me the hardest was this
woman who stood up. She didn't look like anybody who would have anything to
say that I could learn from. But she said that she didn't want to be left
with this feeling that her husband was getting all the help. She didn't
want to be left as the person who was still angry at the fact she wasn't
perceptive or she was foolish or she was lied to. Instead of getting over
it, she was afraid she would always be angry about it, and that would be her
legacy: to be angry. I though, That's me. I don't want to be
left with that either."
"You two have been through a lot. Has it made you more of a romantic?"
"I don't think I really am romantic."
"Would Dennis say you were?"
"I don't know what he would say, but I don't think so. I think he's more
romantic than I am. I'm much more pragmatic ... very sensible. I don't get
my feet swept off the ground very much. I just find that I'm very, ah,
grounded."
Nita has baked Ryan a sweet-potato pie, and I go by her restaurant to
pick it up on my way out to Hilton Head, South Carolina, where Ryan and
Quaid have rented a house while he finishes filming his movie in Savannah.
Just across the Georgia state line, Hilton Head is a sprawling country-club
community filled with brand-new homes bloated with a bland sense of
grandeur. Ryan and Quaid have esconced themselves in one of these monstrous
tract houses in one of the most exclusive areas, right on the beach. The
back wall of the house is completely glass and allows you togaze towards the
shore in order to avert your eyes from the mirrored wall that soars two
stories over the pink fireplace. Luckily, some of their son's toys litter
the living-room floor, making the place seem somewhat like a home - but
certainly nothing like the real homes Ryan and Quaid have in California and
Montana. The former, built in 1917, is a bungalow near Santa Monica that
they bought three years ago; the latter is a 200-acre spread that abuts
director Sam Peckinpah's ranch.
A barefoot Ryan in a black turtle-neck and old ripped jeans greets me as I
place the sweet-potato pie on the kitchen counter, which is strewn with
books and manuscripts by and about the poet Sylvia Plath. She explains that
she is considering playing Plath in a film biography to be produce by
Prufrock. Suddenly the front door swings open, and Jack, towheaded and
terribly cute, comes running through it with his nanny in hot pursuit. They
have just visited one of the many nearby malls, and Jack has come back with
trading cards depicting characters from The Lion King. "Jack has
taught us all about love and patience and God and wonder," Dennis Quaid
told me, and as the child begins to jabber away at me with the narrative
speed of an excited two-year-old, I can see by the way his mother watches
that it was one of the rare times her husband could have been speaking for
her too.
"He has some words - not all of them - but he wants to be conversant, so he
just ... chats," Ryan says as I try to understand what Jack is saying
to me. "He was just showing you something to do with 'Hakuna Matata,'" she
interprets. "That means 'no worries.'"
"He's a big kid," I tell her.
"He was 10 pounds at birth. I had to have an emergency C-section."
"Come on, Jack, it's time for your nap," the nanny informs him.
"No! I want to pwray!" he complains, giving the word all the religious
connotations it must have for a small child. Suddenly the muscles and bones
in his face conspire in the cute way that Ryan has bragged about.
"You and your mommy are going to have some private playtime later," the
nanny tells him as she picks him up and takes him over to Ryan so that she
can kiss him before he's put to bed.
"Do you pray?" I ask her, taking my cue from Jack's jabberwocky.
I've started to meditate," she says, her ears cocked towards her son's
whimpering upstairs. "It's different - it's a contemplation, a spiritual
discipline. I started because my mind was so chatty that it was exhausting
me. I thought, Ive got to get still . . . . I'm trying to find
something that works for me, because the Catholicism I grew up with doesn't
anymore. I saw too many contradictions in it. Then a few years ago my
friend died of AIDS," she says, and tells me about Patrick Lippert, who
spearheaded, among other social causes, the 1992 Rock the Vote campaign.
"Jack was born a few months later, and I started wondering if death was like
a birth . . . . When Patrick died, it was a totally different kind of
experience for me than I ever anticipated. I came home that night knowing he
had died, and I had the biggest feeling of joy in my heart. I couldn't
believe it. In retrospect, I think I realized - not intellectually, but just
within myself - that there is a God. And Patrick was going toward
wherever that was. I felt very sure about it - without my mind
attached to it. It was just a feeling . . . . Spirituality is the big thing
in my life right now. The Search! . . . After experiencing the miracle of
birth, I began to wonder about death. Is death that same kind of miracle?"
"You and Dennis opened up your home for a memorial service for Patrick.
Friends that were there have told me how gracious you were that day."
"Well, yeah, we had this kind of party for him, and ... ah ..." Slowly the
muscles and bones in her face begin to conspire. As her son's soft cries
subside, she begins to sob. "I'm sorry - I haven't . . ." The tears won't
stop.
"Are you O.K.?" I ask, crossing the room to where she has sunk into a sofa
and holding her until she can regain her composure. "Why don't we have some
of what Nita sent us?" I suggest. Ryan dries her eyes, and we walk over to
the giant kitchen. As she finds a knife and some forks in the umfamiliar
drawers, I gaze out the glass wall and see an old man, wearing the bottoms of
his trousers rolled, strolling along the beach. "Mmmmm," I hear Meg Ryan
murmur, and turn back to see her eating sweet-potato pie amidst the Plath.
Reprinted from Vanity Fair, May 1995.
© 1995 Condé Nast Publications Ltd. (in the UK)
Reprinted without permission.