“A very high-priced star”: when Meg Ryan refused $5m to protect her untarnished image
For a 1990s movie that some people might know but most people only have a vague recollection of, Gus Van Sant’s black comedy To Die For has quite an incredible cast list of stars past and present, and the names that were almost involved are just as impressive, including Matt Damon and Meg Ryan.
Based on a real-life story about a celebrity-obsessed woman who convinces a pair of teenagers to kill her husband, 1995’s To Die For was believed by Hollywood studios to have the potential to be an edgy but hugely successful film, meaning agents were clamouring to get their clients considered. Van Sant had won acclaim for the Keanu Reeves indie hit My Own Private Idaho in 1991, and Ryan was lined up to play his leading character, named Suzanne Stone, this time around.
A salary of $5million was touted to get Ryan, who was globally famous as the Golden Globe-nominated star of 1989’s When Harry Met Sally, and Van Sant met with her to discuss taking the role, recalling, “Meg Ryan was interested in playing Suzanne Stone and came in for a discussion. She was a very high-priced star at the time. To Die For was definitely not like the mainstream work she’d been doing in movies like Sleepless in Seattle.”
Although she was undoubtedly a rom-com star, she had shown considerable range by taking on more varied projects like Oliver Stone’s The Doors biopic and a horror called Flesh and Bone with Dennis Quaid, but it wasn’t enough to convince her that a fame hungry, murderous weather girl who seduces a 16-year-old was the right move for her, despite the money on offer.
She passed on the film, and it proved to be the making of a future Oscar winner in Nicole Kidman, who got the main role ahead of the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Sandra Bullock and Patricia Arquette. Elsewhere, the casting process for the film reads like a who’s who of Hollywood names: Matt Damon auditioned but was deemed too old, although he recommended his best friend Ben Affleck’s brother, Casey, who was cast. Joaquin Phoenix is also in the movie in an early role with a performance that hinted at the generational talent to come.
Also in the movie is Matt Dillon, and there’s even a cameo from director David Cronenberg, but it is best known for the central performance of Kidman, who took the part for a fraction of what was offered to Ryan, paying her own tribute by basing many of her character Stone’s mannerisms and accent on the older actor’s.
Kidman would end up being nominated for a Bafta and taking home a Golden Globe for the film, and Ryan, meanwhile, would make two films that year, the romantic comedy French Kiss with Kevin Kline, which was a success at the box office, and Restoration, a historical drama with Robert Downey Jr, which definitely wasn’t.
Ryan struggled for further hits for a couple of years until she made City of Angels with Nicolas Cage in 1998, which is probably best known now for giving the world ‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls, and the Tom Hanks comedy You’ve Got Mail the same year, which was another huge title and earned her a Golden Globe nomination for ‘Best Actress’.
Van Sant, on the other hand, was about to have an enormous, career-changing success at the time with Damon and Affleck’s Good Will Hunting, which was nominated for nine Oscars, including earning him a nod for ‘Best Director’.
