Meg Ryan played Carole Bradshaw in Top Gun, and that was only the beginning of a successful acting career that took off in the late 1980s and the 1990s – and here’s what Meg Ryan has done since Top Gun. Meg Ryan’s acting career began in 1981 in the drama movie Rich and Famous, after which she joined the soap opera As The World Turns, where she played Betsy Stewart for two years, becoming part of the main cast. Ryan’s career continued with the horror movie Amityville 3-D in 1983, the sitcom Charles in Charge, and the TV series Wildside, and in 1986, she was cast in Tony Scott’s action drama movie Top Gun.
Top Gun tells the story of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise), a young naval aviator training at the Top Gun Naval Fighter Weapons School. Maverick’s reckless and cocky attitude puts him at odds with other pilots, especially Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer), and after losing his best friend Nick “Goose” Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), Maverick is given a second chance to redeem himself. Maverick struggles to be at his best, while also fighting for the attention of his flight instructor, Charlotte Blackwood (Kelly McGillis). Meg Ryan played Carole Bradshaw, Goose’s wife, and her big break arrived a couple of years later.
Following Top Gun, Meg Ryan appeared in the comedy Armed and Dangerous, the drama Promised Land, the sci-fi comedy Innerspace, the mystery movie D.O.A, and the crime movie The Presidio before her big break in the 1989 rom-com When Harry Met Sally…. Ryan played the title Sally opposite Billy Crystal’s Harry, who meet in Chicago before sharing a cross-country drive and keep casually coming across different places over the course of 12 years. When Harry Met Sally… was a critical and financial success, and was the beginning of Meg Ryan’s reign as a rom-com star in the late 1980s and 1990s.
After starring in the rom-com Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) alongside Tom Hanks, Ryan played Pamela Courson in the biographical musical The Doors and starred in the romantic fantasy movie Prelude to a Kiss, which was a big failure, but Ryan maintained her status as a rom-com star when she starred in Sleepless in Seattle as Annie Reed, a journalist who falls for Sam (Hanks), a recently widowed architect. Ryan left rom-coms aside in 1994 when she starred in Luis Mandoki’s drama When a Man Loves a Woman, where she played an alcoholic school counselor, but she quickly returned to rom-coms with I.Q, French Kiss, and Addicted to Love, earning the titles of “the soul of romantic comedy” and “America’s Sweetheart”. Ryan’s career continued to grow in the late 1990s with projects like Anastasia (where she voiced the title character), City of Angels, and You’ve Got Mail, the latter marking her third collaboration with Tom Hanks.
Meg Ryan’s acting career slowed down in the 2000s, with her most notable roles being Alice Bowman in the action thriller Proof of Life and Kate McKay in James Mangold’s rom-com fantasy Kate & Leopold, and after taking a three-year break, she starred in Jon Kasdan’s indie movie In the Land of Women, followed by a couple of not-so-successful projects. After appearing in the web series Web Therapy and the TV movie Fan Girl in the 2010s, Ryan shifted her focus to directing and made her directorial debut in 2015 with the drama Ithaca. At the time of writing, Meg Ryan doesn’t have any projects lined up, so it’s to be seen if she will continue directing or if she will return to work in front of the cameras.