Source: http://www.crazydaysandnights.net

Mexican Restaurant Blues

An INSIDERHER Blind Item

It was around the year 2000.

I stopped into a cute New Mexican restaurant that had recently opened in Pacific Palisades – home of the stars.

It was practically empty, but I felt like an enchilada, so I went in and sat down.

The place was pretty much empty, it being a week day afternoon. As I scrolled through the menu, I noticed a small, pathetic looking creature huddled alone at a one-seater at the restaurant.

Even with tears in her big blue eyes, no makeup, and her famous tousled blonde hair looking like it hadn’t been brushed in days, there was no mistaking who she was.

And, there was also no doubt that she wasn’t preparing for a film role.

This was a genuinely distraught woman.

Her sadness was so private that I wouldn’t have thought of intruding upon it.

She mostly looked down, or stared blankly out the window.

All I could think was this: here’s this famous movie star who people assume leads a charmed life, weeping & alone in a Mexican restaurant.

It doesn’t matter who you are, your heart can be broken.

That day, I thought I saw the saddest little girl in the world, not the star of countless hit films.

She & her ex have been in the news recently, fighting over who cheated, or who cheated more.

I dunno, and don’t much care.

On that day, she was one miserable girl, and I truly pitied her.

I also like her on film.

I think a lot of people felt she had a natural sense of honesty about her.

Even against a permanent A+ list actor, she shone, and made people want to watch her smile.

I hope she’s doing a lot more of it these days.

Meg Ryan

Dennis Quaid

Talk about right time, right place: Bob Mitchell was in for one very happy surprise when he hobbled up to Onieal’s bar and restaurant on April 19. A regular at the hip Manhattan hangout, the 41-year-old Off-Broadway producer—on crutches because of a broken leg—had just stepped inside when, from out of the din, a beautiful blonde in a skin-tight shirt ran up and wrapped him in a warm embrace. Seconds later, realizing that Mitchell was not, in fact, the old friend she’d mistaken him for, she apologized and quickly backed off. In a fit of giggles she returned to her gang of girlfriends (including singers Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang), her mar-garitas (poured straight up in a martini glass) and a night of dancing. Mitchell, meanwhile, made his way to the bar, sat down on a stool and coolly informed the bartender, “Meg Ryan just gave me a big kiss.”

Mitchell may be telling that story for years. But for Ryan, 39, the kiss was likely less memorable—unlike the ones she was doling out this time last year, when the British press reported that the girl-next-door star of When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail was cheating on her husband of nine years, Dennis Quaid, 47, with her Proof of Life costar Russell Crowe, 37. Within weeks of announcing their separation on June 28, 2000, she and Quaid—whom Ryan had helped see through cocaine and alcohol trouble—filed for divorce. And amid the media frenzy that followed, Ryan’s world turned upside down. She moved out of the $2.9 million Brentwood, Calif., home she had shared with Quaid and their 9-year-old son Jack and into an $8.9 million Bel Air home a few miles away. She closed her production company. She saw Proof of Life bomb at the box office. And she stood by bewildered while the world stood in judgment of her. Within months she had gone from America’s Sweetheart to Scarlet Woman and finally—after reports that Crowe had dumped her—to Woman Scorned. Little wonder Ryan found the attention bizarre. “I haven’t thought of myself as a famous person,” she told W magazine last November, “until this recent episode in my life.” – Source


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