“I was always happy being the one observing”: Meg Ryan discusses fame, friendship and feminism at Locarno 2018 press conference
Actor and director Meg Ryan is this year’s recipient of the 2018 Leopard Club Award for lifetime achievement. The filmstar first earned fame in Rob Reiner’s When Harry met Sally, going on to star in Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail and Jane Campion’s In the Cut, the last of which is being reshown at Locarno this year. The filmmaker reflected on her life and work over the course of an interview held in the mountains looking over Lake Maggiore.
Ryan’s experience on her first film Rich and Famous was with director and past Locarno favourite George Cukor, who “had a natural authority and was a natural patriarch. This created a great set and learning experience. Cukor saying ‘don’t act’ was excellent advice and my prevailing memory of him.”
The actress then told of how she moved to New York to be out of the spotlight. “I’d never really aspired to be an actor. It wasn’t my childhood dream at all. I was always happy being the one observing rather than being the subject.”
Becoming famous was “a radical change” in her life. Her fame persists. “A cab driver picked me up a couple of weeks ago and said, ‘Meg Ryan, can I take you to Paris?’ That kind of thing happens to me all the time and I love it. But the condition of fame is weird. You’re separate from natural conversation.”
“You the see effect on your family in ways that are profound. Part of being tough is having a bulls**t detector. You’re always measuring how authentic people are being. I really tried to isolate myself from that experience but it’s a crappy way to live.” Ryan spoke about how she has a “bulletproof vest” for criticism. “I don’t read anything written about me.“
The filmmaker expanded on the nature of fame: “Almost anyone can experience fame now through social media. Most people are having the experience now. New Yorkers are fantastic. They don’t care if you’re famous. Once, people in the store I was in told the paparazzi they could have two pictures and then they had to go!”
On her rapid success after working with Nora Ephron, Ryan noted how the writer “brought back America’s sweetheart and applied it to me. But any label is limiting. I made very reactive choices when I was working: a comedy and then a drama, a big movie and a small movie. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was learning in front of everybody.”
On her new TV project, The Obsolescents, which is in its initial stages, Ryan remarked on how the work plays on the word adolescents and on the idea of failure. “I’m really looking forward to it. I almost want to be in it. But I’m much more into directing and producing right now.”
Moving onto matters of getting her projects financed and of her reputation, Ryan spoke about how “working friendships are so common in the business. You can’t do a movie by yourself. I got famous when I was young and it alters how you mature. It’s not healthy to be the subject of conversation all the time. It’s important to be curious.”
Ryan described In the Cut as “a feminist deconstruction of romantic myth. We [Ryan and Campion] knew that. It was lost when the movie came out because I was naked. It was an intelligent attempt at deconstructing these myths.”
“Jane Campion told me about how the Arthurian idea of a white knight is actually a very dangerous thing. Failure happens for men and women alike. But this film is 15 years old and only now are we able to have a smart conversation about it. It was a wonderful opportunity to talk about it again here.”
On the legacy of the film for women filmmakers, Ryan said how “it was so relaxing to work on that movie with a female director [Campion]. The camera took the position of my point of view. It can be a more subtle performance. You didn’t have to get a laugh. Performance-wise it was really fun to do.”
“I hope the movie gets rediscovered for those reasons because maybe it did anticipate the current political and cultural moment for women. I know Jane would be really proud of that. Right then it just felt completely natural. The reaction at the time was shocking. They didn’t like me. I don’t know if they didn’t like the movie.”
Ryan commented on the current response to sexual harassment in the industry. “The business was and probably still is male-dominated. I believe #MeToo was a movement whose time had come. It was labelled instantly. The revelations came out about Harvey [Weinstein] less than a year ago. My daughter is now having classes and they’re educating boys and girls about how no means no.”
“Someone told me how the work of society is to mature the masculine and deepen the feminine. We want to power-share. The power dynamic has to shift. I believe the beginning is right now. Men aren’t all bad; women aren’t all good. So there’s a lot of subtlety that’s lost in the conversation. Sometime the pendulum will swing to the middle about how people want to be treated and we will move forward together.”
Joseph Owen
Photo: Pier Marco Tacca/ Getty Images
For further information about Locarno Film Festival 2018 visit here.
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