Meg Ryan hasn’t been on the big screen for quite some time, and frankly, she likes it that way. After being the Hollywood queen of the RomCom, she has decided to leave Los Angeles and settle down into a quiet existence with her daughter, Daisy, who is 8, and her boyfriend, rocker John Mellencamp.

Well, as quiet as it gets, anyway. The paparazzi still consistently follow them around to get pictures of them, and, unfortunately, they probably always will.

In her interview with People magazine, Meg reveals the unexpected liberator that led to her decision. It was her affair with hunk Russell Crow, who she met on the set of the movie they worked together on, “Proof of Life”, in 2001. She was married to Dennis Quaid at the time, who is father to her son, Jack. This revelation broke up the already faltering marriage, wherein it turns out, both of them were allegedly being unfaithful.

She says to People that it was unbelievably hard to go from being America’s Sweetheart to the Scarlett Woman, but it was also incredibly liberating.

“So this is what it feels like to be the scarlet woman. Oh! I’m having that experience now!,” she told the magazine. “It was also incredibly liberating. Now I was utterly free. I didn’t have to care about what people thought. I have gotten to do what I guess I secretly wanted to do. Be totally under the radar and live my life.”

So, why New York City? “Los Angeles is just about movies. New York is about so much more than that, and so is Meg,” her friend, writer Delia Ephron told People. Hopefully Meg, John and Daisy can live that quiet life they hope for.

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