Rom-com queen Meg Ryan wowed a packed house at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Tuesday, reprising some of her iconic roles from films such as When Harry Met Sally and You Mail while discussing her life and career in the film industry since her 60th birthday.
“I don’t often see the downside. I’m the luckiest person you’ll ever meet,” she said. “I don’t feel like I’m denied anything. I live a dream life and work with incredible people.”
Ryan is appearing at the Bosnian festival to accept a lifetime achievement award and to promote her latest film, “What Happens Later,” a romantic comedy she directed, wrote and executive produced, in which she plays two ex-lovers stranded in a snowstorm alongside David Duchovny.
She will also present a special screening of her successful 1998 romantic comedy You’re in the Mail at the Coca-Cola Open Air Cinema, the same venue where the film was shown 25 years ago at the fifth edition of the Sarajevo Festival.
Tuesday’s master class, moderated by Oscar-winning Bosnian director Danis Tanović (“No Man’s Land”), began with an excerpt from the legendary deli scene from When Harry Met Sally, which elicited the same enthusiastic reaction from audiences in Sarajevo as it has in the 35 years since its release.
Ryan stressed that she hadn’t heard that in a long time and described her co-star Billy Crystal as “the perfect person to fake an orgasm” and said with a serious expression: “What a crazy thing to be famous for.”
The actress recalls her beginnings in the 1980s on the long-running soap opera “As the World Turns” – a job she took to finance her studies at NYU – before her breakthrough in 1986 with a spectacular performance alongside Tom Cruise in the blockbuster “Top Gun”.
Ryan alongside co-star Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally.”
Columbia/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
Her second film, When Harry Met Sally, was the first of three career-defining roles in romantic comedies – including You Mail and Sleepless in Seattle – written by the late, great Nora Ephron, who praised Ryan for her “way of creating an environment that brings out the best in people.”
“She made the set like a dinner party at her house. It was so much fun,” she said. “She had cooking competitions and food tastings. Everyone on the set was an interesting conversationalist. It was like a dinner party you never wanted to leave.” Returning to her star-building scene in a New York deli, she added, “That’s just great writing. And that’s Nora Ephron. And you almost never get writing like that.”
What Happens Later is Ryan’s second directorial effort following the 2015 film Ithaca, which she directed and starred in alongside her son Jack Quaid and reunited with Tom Hanks on screen for the fourth time. The Bleecker Street Media release marks her first time directing and writing a romantic comedy.
The film is based on Steven Dietz’s play “Shooting Star” and is about two old flames who run into each other by chance when their flights are caught in snow and spend the night at an airport reliving the past.
Ryan, who is appearing on screen for the first time in eight years, said the film – which was shot in three weeks on a $3 million budget – was “very difficult.” But she added that the challenge was partly what inspired her to make the movie.
“How much can you see your limitations as an opportunity? We didn’t have a big budget. We shot in 21 nights. The film had to have room to maneuver,” she said. “We ended up shooting in a museum in Arkansas. We couldn’t control the extras – we had to use real people. It was fun figuring all of these things out in this limited time with this limited budget.”
“What Happens Later” is Ryan’s first time writing and directing a romantic comedy.
Stefania Rosini
Recalling some of her memorable performances on the big screen, Ryan described receiving terse instructions from director Tony Scott on the set of Top Gun (“In this scene, you’re happy”; “In this scene, you’re sad”), studying Carl Jung’s work to play three different women in Joe Versus the Volcano, and struggling to get into character when asked to play a drunk in When a Man Loves a Woman. She also spoke about a role she famously turned down, in Silence of the Lambs, noting that Jodie Foster was “the right person” to play FBI cadet Clarice Starling, but added, “I don’t see it as a comedy.”
When asked about opportunities for older women in Hollywood, Ryan acknowledged that there are certain limitations for women over a certain age, but added that these limitations have inspired her to explore new avenues in her career.
“There’s no doubt that for any older person, there are limits to the roles they can play – for an actor,” she said. “But there are no limits for a director or a producer. And at a certain point, you just want to say what you mean. And sometimes that’s not about being an actor.”
Ryan previewed three upcoming projects: one in which she stars, one in which she is set to direct, and a third in which she plans to direct and produce.
“I just love being in the environment of storytelling. And I discovered midway through my career the value of community in it – not just of the filmmakers, but of the community with the audience. And what a happy way to make a living,” she said. “I just try to prepare these things. You just throw all kinds of things at the wall until you see what sticks.”
The Sarajevo Film Festival takes place from 16 to 23 August.
