Ryan's Hope
Lisa Schwarzbaum looks forward to the day when Meg Ryan trades in her cutie-pie
image and depicts full-bodied females
Some years ago, when she was first starring in the great British TV police drama
"Prime Suspect," I interviewed Helen Mirren in a swanky New York restaurant. Sh
e looked grand and elegant, did Mirren, and only the indelible blue tattoo visib
le in the fleshy arc between thumb and
forefinger hinted at her long career as a sexy tamale willing to remove her clo
thes in every role. Mirren spoke coolly and smartly about her decision to take t
he role of Jane Tennison, a somewhat haggard, often lonely middle-aged detective
: She wanted to pave a road to characte
rs that would suit her in the next phase in her professional life, a time when s
he wouldn't be cast in naked, sexy-tamale roles.
I thought of Mirren last week as I read about Meg Ryan's speech at a Women in Fi
lm luncheon in Los Angeles, an extended photo op, really, at which Ryan was one
of the headline-catching honorees. I thought of Mirren because when Ryan is in f
ull fuzzy-wuzz mode -- little feet patt
ering, little nose twitching, little curly head bobbing with Tinkerbell energy -
- she makes me grind my teeth and reach for my Simone de Beauvoir. But this Ryan
was different.
This Ryan, canny and composed, acknowledged, "I am known to cause diabetes."
This self-aware cookie said tartly that she was sick of her "nauseatingly adorab
le" image. That when cute-girl actresses get old, all that's left for them is pe
t activism and commercials for Depends. And that "Cute girls don't go through me
nopause. They get hysterectomies that a
re secretly funded by the government."
Ryan made her audience laugh with pleasure and nod in recognition of the truth,
Hollywood style. I'm only hoping she'll seize that truth and run with it -- all
the way to roles that let the sophisticated 37-year-old wife and mother trade in
pixie mannerisms for more full-bodied
characters. Cute-girl characters who hide their womanly sexuality under flannel
nightgowns and funky knitted winter hats have always been adored by male moviem
akers. But by the time an actress is 30 -- let's say 35, for stragglers -- she'd
do well to think about a different lin
e of dramatic interpretation than nose-scrunching and pulling long sleeves over
her hands (today's universal Ally McBealicious symbol, by the way, of girlish vu
lnerability).
Mirren went from naked seductress to complicated cop without dimming her power.
Ryan, I'm betting, will only gain admirers when she trades in Christmas-bulb twi
nkle for full-spectrum feminine visibility.
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