Age is nothing but a number for Meg Ryan.
The actor, who returned to movies this fall with “What Happens Later,” was the “it girl” of romantic comedies in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, starring in such fare as “When Harry Met Sally...” and “Sleepless in Seattle.”
Ryan, 62, says the world is just too focused on being young.
“Our culture is so obsessed with youth,” she tells Glamour.
“As an old person now, I love my age. I love where I’m at. Aging is not that terrifying. We’re all doing it. I wish someone had told me earlier, ‘Just relax. It is what it is. Don’t pay attention to the obstacles.’”
Ryan also shuts out the media speculation and tabloid rumors she has endured over the years, from chatter about how she looks different than she once did to how she isn’t seen in public too much.
“I can’t pay attention to it. I just can’t,” she said. “It’s not worth it. Of course that would hurt someone’s feelings, but there are so many more interesting things to think about. Meanness and hatred are just so stupid.”
Ryan also appears to have found a sweet spot in her life now.
“There’s a time in your teens and 20s where you’re trying on personalities to figure out who you are, who to be,” she said. “With age, you get to a place where you say what you mean without thinking about how it’s going to land. You just say what you want.”
Ryan also knows that the level of fame she once experienced is only a moment in time.
“What I had in the ’90s was a ride,” she said. “It was a kind of moonshot and was really fun, but it’s just one ride out of the billions of things you could be interested in.”
“What Happens Later” may reflect Ryan’s own trajectory of life. It’s the story of two exes (Ryan and David Duchovny) who are snowed in together at an airport after splitting more than 20 years earlier and are forced to come to terms with their past.
“These guys are trying to make sense of a life actually not lived with one another,” she said when she appeared with Duchovny on TODAY on Nov. 1.
“And they have this sort of subtextual question (that) I think people might be able to relate to, which is, ‘Why didn’t you love me enough? Why didn’t it work?’ And they kind of connect and disconnect and connect again, and it’s the story of that.”