Meg Ryan Just Isn’t ‘Wired’ for Fame

Meg Ryan is “really not wired” for fame.

The When Harry Met Sally actress thinks she’d have been “happier” in her life if she wasn’t in the public eye and though she’s got used to the attention she receives as a result of her big screen success, she finds the way people behave around her “bizarre.”

She told People magazine: “I’m not really somebody who set out to be a famous person at all. I think I imagined that I would’ve been happier as someone in the audience. But this has put me in this place where I’ve had to get more comfortable with attention.

“There’s privilege in it. And there’s also some really strange stuff about people thinking they can talk about you or write about you in a way that you just can’t relate to at all.

“And I see it has effects on people around me. People close to you, they get asked about you. It’s so bizarre. But I don’t get asked about them. If you want to make sense of it, it’ll take a while.”

The 61-year-old star took a “giant break” from Hollywood after her directorial debut Ithaca in 2015 and has been leading a quieter life in California.

She said: “I have fame that follows me around, but it comes in waves.

“And for the most part, it’s just people smiling and saying hi to me. I have such an unbelievable array of different types of people in my life and friends, and I just like the variety.

“If your identity is about your next project, it’s a very insecure place to be.”

Meg, who is now back in the spotlight with What Happens Later, a film she directed, co-wrote and stars in, insisted it is a priority for her to stay true to herself and retain control of her life.

She said: “That feeling of being true to yourself, to me, is everything. It’s a giant priority of mine to not give that away.

“The feeling of, you sleep at night, you know who you are, you feel good about those decisions, you feel good about the people in your life, you’re not going to give your authority away, your power away, you rest easy.

“It’s taken a while for me to do that. But I’m in pretty solid possession of that now.”