Meg Ryan faced plenty of public shaming after her affair with Russell Crowe hit the press. Ryan spoke up about a moment when she was a laughingstock amid the drama in an interview with The Guardian in 2003. “It was in One Aldwych Hotel,” she recalled. “This thing happened and I was all over the tabloids and I walked through the lobby and the place stopped. People stopped talking and stared at me.” Even though it may have been an embarrassing situation, Ryan said she brushed off the incident. “And then I got to the elevator and instead of falling apart and going, ‘Ooh,’ I just started laughing,” she said. “This thing that people are so afraid of all the time — public censure or disapproval — has no power if you know yourself.”
Ryan further divulged her feelings about rising above the drama in a 2019 interview with The New York Times Magazine. “It’s a real gift when you know you can’t ever really manage an image or a story and you stop caring,” she said. “I felt the effect, like I was the bad guy or whatever the story was. But I remember letting go of needing to correct anybody.”
