When Meg Ryan was blamed for divorce with Dennis Quaid: 'It was a very unhealthy marriage'
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ featuring Meg Ryan is celebrating its 30th anniversary and fans are still in awe of how finely the romantic comedy has aged. When the movie was released in 1993, the Nora Ephron directorial managed to enthrall the global audience and presented them with a cinematic genius featuring stars like the real-life couple Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Bill Pullman, and America’s sweetheart Meg Ryan.
During the release of ‘Sleepless in Seattle’, Ryan was at the pinnacle of her career following successes in the films like ‘When Harry Met Sally’. After the success of ‘Sleepless in Seattle’, she continued to deliver hits like ‘French Kiss’, ‘You’ve Got Mail’, ‘Hanging Up’ throughout the ’90s. However, her status as the Queen of Rom-coms was soon tarnished after her divorce from Dennis Quaid in 2001.
While Ryan was going through her messy separation from Quaid, she was also embroiled in a scandal because of her relationship with Russell Crowe. Due to this, Meg Ryan was labeled as the primary cause for her divorce from the ‘Reagan’ actor. But is Ryan really to blame entirely for the divorce?
'It was a very unhealthy marriage'
During an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2006, Ryan talked in detail about her divorce and her affair with Crowe. She shared that she was hurt about the “tabloid aspect” as only some selected pieces of news were reaching the general public, contributing largely to the public discontent. Ryan quipped that she never spoke out because she had a little boy from her marriage with Quaid and believed, “You can never really win in the way.”
She said, “It was a very unhealthy marriage, and it was pretty much not a happening marriage for a very long time,” further adding that she should have left the marriage long ago, “I probably should've left much earlier.” She further stressed the fact that the degeneration of the marriage was not because of any other proponent, namely, Russell Crowe, as she said, “It was never about another man.”
Saying the Crowe “wasn't a home wrecker,” Ryan said, “I didn't leave my marriage for Russell Crowe,” before adding she left her marriage because “My marriage was not working.”
In a 2008 interview with ‘In Style’, as reported by TODAY, she further divulged that it was not her affair with Crowe that was the reason for their divorce, but rather Quaid’s unfaithfulness was to be blamed. She said, "It was a great story. But what wasn't in the story was the reality of my marriage for nine years. Dennis was not faithful to me for a long time, and that was very painful. I found out more about that once I was divorced."
However, she quipped that she was not a “victim,” saying she rather found her stint as a “scarlet woman” to be “liberating.” Ryan said in the interview, “My time as a scarlet woman was really interesting. As painful as it was, it was also incredibly liberating. I didn’t have to care about what people thought.”
'I walked through the lobby and the place stopped'
Ryan once told The Guardian in 2003 that while she became an overnight sensation due to her fall from grace, it didn’t bother her at all, "This thing happened [her scandal with Crowe] and I was all over the tabloids and I walked through the lobby and the place stopped. People stopped talking and stared at me. And then I got to the elevator and instead of falling apart and going, 'Ooh,' I just started laughing. This thing that people are so afraid of all the time — public censure or disapproval — has no power if you know yourself."
'It really made it hit home'
Over the years, even Quaid admitted that Ryan’s sudden fame as Queen of Rom-Coms did stress him. During an interview with the Independent in 2019, he said, "When we started, I was very much on top. She was just starting out.” But after the consecutive successes of her films, they found at the opposite spectrum of their careers from where they started, “Then she had When Harry Met Sally and I took time out and the roles were suddenly reversed in terms of where we were at, in our careers.”
While he said that he was “glad” for her success, at the same time, he admitted, it was taking a toll in the relationship, “I’m too big of a person to really let that bother me and it wasn’t her fault. I was glad for her, but at the same time it really made it hit home where I was at myself, the direction things were headed."