The iconic Oscar-winning movie Meg Ryan turned down: “It probably would not have been a hit”
Being a rom-com star in the 1990s came with baggage. Hugh Grant, who starred in a slew of Richard Curtis romances including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Love Actually, became so typecast as a bashful, self-effacing Englishman that he began to play the character in real life. And Matthew McConaughey had to win an Oscar for playing a dying AIDS patient before anyone would see past the Failure to Launch guy. Meg Ryan faced a similar battle.
After close to a decade of playing minor roles in a range of genres, Ryan struck gold when she teamed up with Billy Crystal, screenwriter Nora Ephron, and director Rob Reiner to make 1989’s When Harry Met Sally, a film that is still the high watermark of romantic comedies. It instantly turned her into a rom-com star, and her skill in the genre was made only more evident throughout the next decade. Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, French Kiss, and Kate & Leopold showcased her ability to come across as both a relatable adult and someone who could walk straight into a fairytale, a combination that no other actor has captured quite as believably.
When Ryan finally tried to step outside of her rom-com box, however, audiences were having none of it. In 2000, she starred opposite Russell Crowe in the gritty thriller Proof of Life, and it began a rapid downward spiral in her career. 2003’s neo-noir In the Cut put the final nail in the coffin and led to some mind-bendingly out-of-line interviews in which so-called journalists interrogated her about her nude scenes.
It is hardly surprising that it took Ryan so long to look for roles outside romantic comedy, even if she had gotten the opportunity to do so long before. In the early 1990s, she was offered the role of Clarice Starling in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, but turned it down. In an interview a few years later, she explained why. “I felt like it was just so dark of an arena, I just didn’t want to be in that for a few months,” she said. “I didn’t want to just then.”
As far as dark movies go, The Silence of the Lambs is definitely plumbing the depths of inky blackness. It was Jodie Foster who ended up playing the role of an FBI agent who teams up with the infamous gentleman cannibal Hannibal Lecter to hunt for a serial killer. The movie won five Oscars, including ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Actress’, and ‘Best Actor’, becoming one of the only horror movies to win big with the Academy.
Ryan didn’t have any regrets about turning down the film and was pretty self-deprecating about it, saying, “You know what? It probably would not have been a hit if I was in it.” That is impossible to fact-check, of course, but given her underrated performances in Proof of Life and In the Cut, it’s quite possible that the movie would have received exactly the same awards that it did with Foster in the lead role and Ryan would now be both a rom-com queen and an Oscar winner.
