Meg Ryan explains why she left Hollywood…and why she’s back

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

For Meg Ryan, acting is “a job and not a lifestyle.”

The “Sleepless in Seattle” star spoke with People magazine about why she stepped away from performing for several years.

“I took a giant break because I felt like there’s just so many other parts of my experience as a human being I wanted to develop,” she told the publication. “It’s nice to think of it as a job and not a lifestyle. And that is a great way of navigating it for me.”

During that time away, she was focused on raising her son Jack, 31, with ex-husband Dennis Quaid, and Daisy, 18, whom she adopted in 2006.

Now, eight years after her 2015 directorial debut “Ithaca,” which was the last film she worked on, Ryan is returning to the big screen.

She cowrote, directed and stars in the new rom-com “What Happens Later,” a story about ex-lovers who get stuck overnight at an airport due to a snowstorm.

“It came to me during lockdown,” she says. “The essence of it is these two people who are stuck together. I just love that idea that we’re held in a space, even if it feels conflicted, maybe for reasons that heal them.”

Ryan costars with David Duchovny and called the production “magical.”

The film deals with kismet or that idea that everything happens for a reason, she said.

That turned her thoughts to the late writer/director Nora Ephron, who was responsible for some of Ryan’s most memorable roles in films like “When Harry Met Sally” and “You’ve Got Mail.”

“The movies I did with Nora had an operative thing about kismet, like destiny and fate,” Ryan said. “And there’s something really comforting about that.”

“What Happens Later” is in theaters Nov. 3.

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