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Meg Ryan (born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra on November 19, 1961 in Fairfield, Connecticut) is an American actress who specializes in romantic comedies, but has also worked in other film genres.

Ryan was born in Fairfield, Connecticut and went by the name Peggy (also her grandmother's nickname) as a child. Her mother, Susan Ryan Jordan, who had done some professional acting in television commercials and had worked as an assistant casting director in New York, encouraged and supported Ryan's study of professional acting technique when Meg was still in grade school. By age 13, Ryan was studying Stanislavsky's Method Acting Technique. At age 14, through her mother's connections, she booked her first television commercial, doing chin-ups & giggling to promote "Tickle" Deodorant. After graduating from Bethel High School in 1979, she studied journalism at New York University. She acted in television commercials to earn extra money while in school. After her first role in a feature film, Rich and Famous (1981), Ryan (now using her screen name) played Betsy Stewart on the daytime drama As the World Turns from 1982 to 1984. Directors for this show especially liked working with her because she could cry on cue.

After several TV film and smaller movie roles, her first full blown hit in a leading role was the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally... (1989). It was favorably received and typecast Ryan as a bubbly, charming, feisty, but incurable romantic. She made several attempts to break away from this stereotype, and garnered some critical acclaim for her work in When a Man Loves a Woman (in which she played an alcoholic) and Courage Under Fire (in which she played a military officer killed in combat). Many of her films of the 1990s were hits not only in North America, but also abroad. She had a very popular on-screen pairing with Tom Hanks: some compared their chemistry to Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. They starred in three films together, and their last, (1998's You've Got Mail), was Ryan's last major box office success for some years to come.

Ryan married actor Dennis Quaid on Valentine's Day in 1991, after starring in two films with him. Ryan only agreed to marry him after he kicked his drug and alcohol addiction. Quaid and Ryan have one child together, Jack Henry, born April 24, 1992. The couple divorced on July 16, 2001. Although Ryan had a relationship with actor Russell Crowe, with whom she was working on a movie, both she and Quaid deny it was a factor in their divorce. In a 2006 interview with Allure, Ryan indicated that Quaid had not been faithful to her during their marriage.

It was during Ryan's marriage to Quaid that she had a falling out with her mother, over Quaid's alleged drug abuse. In interviews the actress cast her mother in a negative light, saying that her mother had abandoned her children to pursue an acting career. In response her mother, Susan Ryan Jordan, published a book in 1999 entitled "The Immune Spirit" about Jordan's struggle with breast cancer and her difficult relationship with her daughter, Meg. Her mother has since given many interviews which paint Ryan in a negative light. The two are now very notably estranged from one another.

In January 2006, Ryan brought her newly adopted daughter, one year old Daisy True, home from China.