Actress Meg Ryan has spoken on being labelled “America’s Sweetheart” and leaving acting.
During the In Goop Health event here on Saturday, Gwyneth Paltrow and Meg Ryan, who was once dubbed “America’s Sweetheart”, talked about a wide range of topics, reports eonline.com.
Raising the topic of being “America’s Sweetheart”, Paltrow talked to Ryan about being pigeon-holed by society.
“You’re either intelligent or sexual or maternal, and I really feel like we’re at a time where those borders are coming down, and it’s coming with a lot of cultural upheaval in a way.”
For the most part, Ryan, who was married to actor Dennis Quaid back in her heyday from 1991 to 2001, “had a lot of fun”.
She continued: “I never wanted to be an actress. The whole idea of being a famous person… I felt like a witness to, I didn’t feel exactly in it, and I think that was a really good thing. I felt like a student of it in a way, or that I was watching it in an anthropological way.”
The actress added: “Life is subtle, people are complex, and the world is obviously complex, and tabloid journalism and headlines, those are not. Tweets, those are not. When you get labelled anything like ‘America’s Sweetheart’, I didn’t even know what that meant.
“Nora Ephron’s (‘When Harry Met Sally…’ director) parents wrote scripts in old Hollywood and there was such a thing as America’s Sweetheart in the ’40s and she decided to say that about me one day and I remember thinking, ‘Is that good””
Paltrow remarked that it was a “confining” title.
Ryan added: “It doesn’t necessarily imply that you’re smart or sexual or complicated or anything, it’s a label. And what can a label do but guess at you'”
As for her “quitting” acting, Ryan said that for a time she was being “very reactive instead of proactive”, reports eonline.com.
