Meg & Nicole AT WAR!
The actresses haven’t seen eye to eye in years and their simmering feud is set to boil over again
They might have a similar body of work, and indeed, similar looks, but there hasn’t been any love lost between Nicole Kidman and Meg Ryan since the early 2000s – and their decades-old feud looks to be reignited over a rogue movie script.
Sources tell Woman’s Day exclusively that there’s a biopic floating around Tinseltown about Meg, 59, who was one of the world’s biggest rom-com names in the 1990s before all but quitting acting after trying an edgier role in 2003’s In The Cut, which was a box-office flop and led her to be savaged by
critics. Insiders say the biopic is “horrendous” to incredibly private Meg, not least because her old frenemy Nicole “has her people looking at the script”.
A Hollywood insider says, “Biopics are all the rage at the moment and moviemakers think Meg’s story of her rise, fall and relationships with Dennis Quaid, Russell Crowe and John Mellencamp is worth telling.
“She would hate the idea and is no doubt pulling out all the legal stops to get it sent straight to the reject pile. Unfortunately, it seems Nicole and her team are interested, which is basically the last thing Meg ever expected to hear, given their rocky past.”
Sources tell Woman’s Day that despite their parallel rise to fame, there’s no love lost between the two women, largely thanks to competing over several roles and 54-yearold Nicole’s grudge against Meg for breaking the heart of her best friend, Russell Crowe, 57.
The pair began an affair during 2000 film Proof Of Life, while Meg was still entangled with her estranged husband Dennis.
“Nicole saw red flags all over this and warned Russell that he would get hurt. It was to be his first Hollywood relationship and Meg was such an It girl, that he was too besotted to pay much mind to Nicole’s words of wisdom,” says an insider.
‘Nicole warned Russell that he would get hurt’
“Sure enough, within a year, their relationship was over and Russell was a complete mess. Nicole will never forgive Meg for doing that to her friend.”
At the time, Meg confessed, “I was a mess. I hurt [Russell] too, at the end. I couldn’t be in another long-term relationship. It wasn’t the time for that, so I got out. I think he took a big hit.”
So too did Meg’s reputation in the showbiz industry.
“Proof Of Life bombed at the box office, and rightly or wrongly, movie bosses blamed the public shift in perception against Meg for the way she treated Russell and Dennis,” says an insider. “It was the start of her downfall, and she hasn’t done anything amazing since.”
Three years later, Meg ironically ended up filling a role that was once earmarked for Nicole, in the erotic thriller
In The Cut.
“Meg hated that movie and felt her career never recovered from it, and a part of her feels she was stitched up when Nicole [who co-produced the film] manoeuvred out of that role and left it for her,” says a source. “So much so that the idea of Nicole playing her in a biopic fills Meg with dread. She can’t help but wonder if it won’t be flattering if her old foe is in charge, and she’ll be hoping like hell it never gets made.”