THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 4, 1995 TAG: 9505040021
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 118 lines
CUTE! PERT!
Does Meg Ryan EVER get tired of hearing those descriptions?
Even as she peered out from those pure blue eyes and ran her hands through her honey-blond hair, America's sweetheart was, consciously or not, turning up the lovability quotient.
``I have my days, just like anyone on Earth'' Meg Ryan was saying. ``Fame and celebrity are the least interesting things about my life. At the moment, when you're interviewing me, I feel famous. When I walk out of here, well, I have a great deal of privacy.''
In real life, Ryan is neither sleepless in Seattle nor looking backward to memories of when Harry met Sally. Her husband, actor Dennis Quaid, is in South Carolina with Julia Roberts, making a movie called ``Kings of Carolina.'' Ryan was on a New York City stopover on the way to the family ranch in Montana (a 200-acre spread) where 2-year-old son Jack Henry awaited.
On screen, opening nationwide Friday, she's in love again in ``French Kiss.'' (Ryan preferred the title ``Paris Match,'' but the copyright guild ruled that it was too similar to Billy Crystal's upcoming ``Forget Paris.'')
Hungry for another movie to spark dream dates, producers hope Americans are eager to pull for Meg one more time as she re-enters the battle of the sexes.
This time, she's in love with a smarmy and devious Frenchman, played with a laughable accent by Kevin Kline. She's in Paris trying to win back her fiance, (``Ordinary People'' Oscar winner Timothy Hutton), who has fallen for a sumptuous French pastry. She wants to win him back but, along the way, she meets that oily Frenchman. It's a picture-postcard journey, directed by Lawrence Kasdan.
In an early scene, she freaks out over flying. According to her, it was not acting.
``I'm frightened to death over flying,'' she said. ``Even though my husband is a pilot, I'm nutty about going up there. He's explained to me everything about airplanes - how they work, everything. It doesn't do any good.''
She found the script for ``French Kiss'' among the lot on her desk at her own Prufrock Pictures (The name of her company is based on a work by T.S. Eliot.) She laughs when she's reminded that she, for the first time, is a movie producer. ``That's the biggest joke going. What did I do? Nothing. Lawrence sat me down and said `Your opinion is valuable to me.' It turned out that I had opinions I never knew I had.''
Kasdan, the ``Big Chill'' director who is making a comeback after the disastrous ``Wyatt Earp,'' said, ``Yes, there is something naturally adorable about Meg. The audience projects upon her face. When she's fanciful and wanting, it comes out funny. She has a lovely spirit and, most of all, is not self-absorbed. She listens.''
Kline says it was the director who decided that the chemistry between Ryan and him would sizzle. ``Chemistry,'' Kline said, ``is nothing more than a good script. Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon hated each other and yet they were memorable lovers in `Wuthering Heights.' It's all there in the writing - or it's not there at all.''
The mischievous Kline has the kind of dead-pan humor that some people take too literally - such as when he recently called Ryan ``a dog'' during an ``Entertainment Tonight'' interview. The comment was meant as comic exaggeration.
Kline admits he had a great time teaching an unsuspecting Ryan dirty French words. ``When I found out what he was doing to me, it was war,'' she laughed. ``I had been going around saying these things in French, and they'd kind of look at me strangely.''
Paris was one Ryan's better filming experiences. ``I was there five months and it seemed less,'' she said. ``The best memory, perhaps, is one night when I was out late and all the lights, on the fountains and monuments, were turned out. It was an eerie, great feeling. Paris is supposed to be the city of lights, but I like it even better when the lights are out.''
She took son Jack Henry along. ``Now,'' she laughed, ``whenever we pass by a telephone pole, he says, `Look, Mommy - the Eiffel Tower.' ''
Her first trip to Paris was at age 17, back-packing it with two friends. ``I remember we could always spot Americans by their shoes. Nothing has changed much. Americans still wear those shoes.''
Ryan, who was called Peggy as a child, was born in Fairfield, Conn. She grew up with two sisters and a brother. At 15, her mother left the family, according to her, to pursue an acting career in New York.
The much-publicized rift between mother and daughter started when the mother, Susan Jordan, went public with a story that her daughter was ``unstable'' as a child and that she had advised her not to marry Dennis Quaid because he was a cocaine addict. Jordan is writing a book and Ryan isn't talking. ``I've had 32 years to deal with her,'' Ryan said.
After studying journalism at New York University, Ryan entered acting via a two-year stint on the daytime serial ``As the World Turns.'' Her movie debut came as Candice Bergen's daughter in ``Rich and Famous,'' directed by George Cuckor. The public first noticed her as the ``cute'' (there's that word again) military wife in ``Top Gun.''
She earned Golden Globe nominations for both ``When Harry Met Sally. . . '' and ``Sleepless in Seattle'' and critical raves for playing a closet alcoholic in ``When a Man Loves a Woman.'' But an Oscar nomination eludes her, perhaps because Oscar voters often ignore comic actresses, or actresses who are associated primarily with comedy.
Already finished is ``Restoration,'' co-starring Hugh Grant and Robert Downey Jr., set in 17th century England. She's planning a remake of ``The Women'' with Julia Roberts, as well as a remake of the Audrey Hepburn vehicle ``Two for the Road.''
``I'd like to have a role like Jane Fonda had in `Klute,' '' she said. ``That woman was so smart and so strong.''
Film audiences, though, clearly prefer Ryan when she's vulnerable. One of the reasons ``I.Q.'' flopped was that she was a genius-sophisticate in it. Audiences didn't warm to that Meg. The comedy, with Tim Robbins, was quickly forgotten.
She met Quaid when they worked together in ``Innerspace.'' Subsequently, they have starred together in ``D.O.A.'' and ``Flesh and Bone.'' She refused to marry him until he conquered his cocaine problem.
``Life is so good right now,'' she said. ``I know it'll be bad again, but, since I had my son, things have been great. I don't have the time to be negative.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by 20th Century Fox
Meg Ryan falls for smarmy and devious Frenchman played by Kevin
Kline in the new romantic comedy "French Kiss."
KEYWORDS: PROFILE INTERVIEW by CNB