Romantic comedy icon Meg Ryan said she loves the challenges that directing a feature film offers up and that since stepping behind the camera for both 2015’sIthacaand 2023’sWhat Happens Later, it’s helped her to look at acting in a different light.
“I understand acting I think more now because of that,” Ryan told an audience at the Sarajevo Film Festival. “I think, as an actor, you’re a soloist in an orchestra. You don’t see the big picture. Your one small job is to play your emotional instrument and know yourself well and be available to your feelings, you know, and to get out of your way and try not to be too intellectual about expressing them.”
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Since being a director, said Ryan, she’s learned that “other actors I’ve worked with have a different process.”
Ryan spoke to a packed audience for a masterclass moderated by Bosnian helmer Danis Tanović, where she took a deep dive into her career trajectory from her beginnings as a journalism student at NYU to becoming one of the biggest actors in the romantic comedy space with hits such as Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally.
She is also set to receive Honorary Heart of Sarajevo award at the festival and to present rom-com What Happens Later, her most recent film which she wrote, directed and stars in alongside David Duchovny. Additionally, Ryan will present a special screening ofYou’ve Got Mailat the festival this week, 25 years after it first played in Sarajevo.
Speaking about her experience of directing the low-budget titleWhat Happens Later, Ryan said: “It’s a job that’s all about how fully can you see your limitations as opportunities? We didn’t have a big budget. We shot in 21 nights. The movie had to have scope. We ended up shooting in a museum in Arkansas. We couldn’t control the extras because we had to use some real people in the museum and then at the airport we shot at, and all of those things were fun to try to figure out with this limited time and this limited budget.”
The masterclass on Tuesday kicked off with the infamousWhen Hally Met Sallyrestaurant scene with Billy Crystal, which Ryan admitted she hadn’t seen in a long time. “What a crazy thing to be famous for,” she quipped.
When questioned about her beginnings in the business, Ryan said: “I really started with no knowledge. I think that I had a beginner’s mind, which I see now as a very valuable thing. There’s a certain amount of naivete and innocence that’s important when you’re an artist and there’s a lot of value in what you don’t know.”
She recalled reading the When Harry Met Sally script for the first time and said it was “just great writing and that’s Nora Ephron – we almost never get writing like that.”
Ryan spoke at length about her experiences of working with different directors across the years such as Tony Scott forTop Gun, John Patrick Shanley forJoe Versus the Volcanoand Ephron, the latter of whom Ryan worked with on three films.
“I basically had two scenes [inTop Gun] and Tony [Scott] for my first said, ‘OK, Meg, in this scene, you’re happy.’ And in my second scene he goes, ‘OK, Meg, in this scene, you’re sad’. And it was great. It was simple and great. Don’t overthink it.”
With Shanley, Ryan said: “I have a tendency to over intellectualize things, and he looked at me at one point and said, ‘Meg, you don’t have to do it right. There is no right. Stop it.’ And that was great advice.”
Working with Ephron across titles such asSleepless in Seattle,You’ve Got MailandWhen Harry Met Sally, was “so fun,” said Ryan. “She made the set like a dinner party at her house. It was so fun. She’d have cook-offs and taste-offs and everyone on the set was interesting to talk to and it was like a dinner party you never wanted to leave. It was a way of, I think, creating an environment to bring out the best in people.”
Ryan stressed that she still feels “lucky” to be working in the film business and it’s a job she never tires of. “We’re so lucky to do it. When you think about all of the time you spend trying to set up a project, and all of the people who are trying to do the same, and how rare it is that you actually get a green light to go and play, it’s hard to think that it’s a drag.”
