Meg Ryan - I'VE LEARNED THERE ARE ALL KINDS OF LOVE'

EIGHT YEARS AFTER HER LAST MOVIE, THE STAR RETURNS TO HOLLYWOOD WITH A NEW ROM-COM. NOW SHE'S OPENING UP ABOUT WHY SHE STEPPED AWAY AND HOW SHE EMBRACED BEING AMERICA'S SWEETHEART

- JULIE JORDAN

"The tingle." That's what Meg Ryan's daughter Daisy, 18, tells her mom she gets after watching a feel-good movie.“It’s so cute,” says Ryan, who’s no stranger to what she calls “that feeling at the end that just makes you feel your heart open.” After her big break in 1986’s Top Gun, she cemented her place as the queen of romantic comedies thanks to beloved films like When Harry Met Sally...and Sleepless in Seattle. The writer, director and actress, 61, also had success in dramatic films such as When a Man Loves a Woman in 1994 and 1996’s Courage Under Fire, but as her fame grew, so did her determination to step away from the spotlight. “I took a giant break because I felt like there’s just so many other parts of my experience as a human being I wanted to develop,” says the Fairfield, Conn., native, who first honed her acting skills on the soap As the World Turns. Her Hollywood hiatus also enabled her to spend more time with her kids Jack, 31, with ex-husband Dennis Quaid, and Daisy, whom she adopted in 2006. “I moved away,” she says. “I don’t live there. It’s nice to think of it as a job and not a lifestyle.”

Now—eight years after her last film, her 2015 directorial debut, Ithaca—Ryan is finally back on the big screen. She stars in, directed and co-wrote the rom-com