- So what happened to you?
What happened?
You kind of disappeared.
Yeah.
You were everywhere, and then you disappeared.
That was calculated, right?
Well, it was definitely time to take a break.
It was definitely time for me to take a break
and just regroup and see where I was at.
And, you know, I've been an actress and famous person
since I've been 19 years old.
And I just needed to be with my son and figure out my life
and see what I wanted.
When you're that busy for that long, for me,
I felt like I was very reactive about my life as opposed
to being proactive.
So I just got still, which was a very, very necessary and good
thing for me.
So I know you went through-- we all know you went
through a very public divorce.
What did you learn from that?
Well, so many things, right?
But I would mostly--
I couldn't even say mostly.
I think there's a lot of feeling I wish it wasn't so public.
OPRAH: Yeah.
You know, that was a really hard aspect of the whole thing.
I mean, the tabloid aspect of it was really heartbreaking.
And it was, for me, something I never really wanted
to talk about in depth because I have a little boy
and because I feel like you can never really win in the way
a tabloid tells a story.
It's a very black and white, very overly simplistic
moral universe that certain people's
stories are supposed to fit in.
And they don't.
So that was one aspect of it that was--
Well, that is why the tabloids work, you know?
MEG: That's right.
I mean, obviously I've been a part of it
for all of my public life.
And that's why it works, because it's
a little piece of the truth mixed
with somebody else's idea of what
they think should be happening.
And people hold onto that.
And people say, oh, yes, yes, I know it's true because--
and what I think the greater public never seems
to understand-- and so there's no reason to even
try to get people to understand is what I think at this point--
is that when people make up stories about you, it hurts.
Yeah.
And when people violate the truth of you, it hurts.
But people think that because you're famous, oh, well,
then it shouldn't, because you're rich,
and you're famous and so therefore--
And it is a problem that it's hard to ask people
to relate to honestly, because it's not
a problem that everybody has.
I mean, certainly you can have a problem with your office
building knowing something about you that's not true
or your extended family or something.
But you know, it's a very--
not highbrow, but kind of like an abstract problem
for this much of the populace.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, but I remember years ago I was on talking about it.
I think it was the after show, and I
was talking about something one of the tabloids had said.
And a woman stood up and said, Oprah, what do we care?
Basically, she said what do you think we care?
Because look at you living the life that you're living.
And, you know, when I'm in my office
and somebody says something about me that's not true,
and everybody's around the water cooler talking about it,
I have no recourse either.
So it really is the same thing, only it's just bigger.
It's just expanded.
OPRAH: Yeah.
So let's talk-- when you were dating Russell Crowe,
you took a lot of heat for that.
MEG: Yeah. OPRAH: Yeah.
Yeah. OPRAH: What was true?
What wasn't true?
Well, my marriage was a--
I think I have to talk about it in a way that's
most respectful to my son.
Yeah.
MEG: It was a very unhealthy marriage,
and it was pretty much not a happening
marriage for a very long time.
I probably should've left much earlier.
And I'm very sad actually that it all
had to come apart in the way that it seemed to have,
you know?
It was never about another man.
It was only about what--
my and Dennis's relationship just couldn't sustain,
you know?
And I think once the tabloids get
a hold of three celebrity names, you're just really in trouble.
Your name goes on that board every week,
and there it is, baby. Yeah.
That's right.
Do you think you took a public bullet for something
that wasn't really your fault? You do?
Yeah.
OPRAH: In what Way
Well, I think I did.
And I think, honestly, Russell did too, because he
wasn't a home wrecker.
He took a lot of heat for that.
And he had a lot of grace, frankly, about not saying--
not talking about the things that he knew
were going on in my marriage.
And I always-- I'll be very grateful to him
for a long time for that.
OPRAH: Really? - Yeah.
Yeah. And he was around at--
you know, divorce is an impossibly
hard transition in your life.
And he was there for a few months.
And you know, I didn't leave my marriage for Russell Crowe.
I left my marriage--
OPRAH: Because your marriage wasn't working.
My marriage was not working.
OPRAH: Yeah.
And so I think this is really interesting, because obviously
I do this show, so I talk to women all the time
who are in bad relationships.
I bet there's an estimate--
I don't know if anybody's ever done this--
of when it starts to go wrong, you
know it really can't be repaired,
how long do you stay after you know it's really over?
I think you want it not to be over very much.
OPRAH: Yeah.
But I hear people-- for some people it's like seven years.
It's like I knew seven years ago it wasn't going to--
I knew five years.
OPRAH: You knew five years? - Yeah, easily.
- Really? - Mm-hmm.
And people have children, there's this whole thing
that you need to sustain.
There's a lot of-- even if your marriage isn't good,
and even if you need to get out, you still
feel guilty somehow, which, you know,
maybe that's a female thing.
I don't know.
But it's crazy how you have to talk yourself
into protecting yourself.
And so there are times in, I think,
every woman's life where she really does
need to get out and expand and do
all those things that make her the best version of herself.
OPRAH: OK.
This is so interesting too.
I say this to my friends all the time who seem to--
you know, they buy the magazines.
And they love the celebrities.
They love the celebrities.
And I always say the red carpet is just that.
It is a red carpet.
And there are people taking pictures on the red carpet.
And that is all it is, because you don't know any more
than there are some people who took some pictures
on the red carpet.
So photos that you were taking on the carpet, you and Dennis,
during that period of five years.
Well, honestly I think towards the end,
we weren't even showing up to the red carpet together.
[LAUGHTER]
That's the truth.
Yeah. - Yeah.
MEG: A little bit, but not really.
Yeah.
And you know, I still don't identify myself with celebrity.
It's just such-- it's so far down on my list.
It's always so odd for me to talk about that, you know,
as if the red carpet is some kind
of achievement or some place that you're
supposed to want to be.
I mean, it's a way to somewhere.
Yeah.
And so you never viewed yourself as a celebrity
even in the height of it?
I do.
Obviously it's a part of my life.
It's a condition.
Fame, I think of as an arbitrarily assigned
kind of condition in your life that you do have to cope with.
It's odd.
It's not a normal experience.
And it affects your life in certain ways,
like people project on you a lot about themselves.
And so you kind of wade through that.
I find myself wading through that.
I go, oh, that's right, I'm famous, and they think this.
OK, so I've got to wait like 20 minutes,
and then we can have kind of a normal conversation.
Mm-hmm Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- You know? - Oh yeah.
And-- yeah, you know.
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
Kinda.
It's just-- it's, you know, bizarre.
OK, so that's interesting, because, you know,
you were at the biggest box office smash hit.
So at the time, was that something
that you could wrap your head around, or was it just--
No, and at the time, I was very
overwhelmed by motherhood, new motherhood.
OPRAH: Jack, yeah.
Yeah.
Not a good marriage.
I think fame is also very isolating.
And so the problems that I was having
with all of those things--
OPRAH: I think it's isolating-- may I beg to differ here?
I think it's isolating if you allow it to be.
MEG: If you allow it to be. I agree.
Yeah.
And I definitely allowed it to be.
Because I see people who are-- you know, like,
I know a lot of famous people.
And there are some who are like, I can't go out.
I can't.
I can't go out. You know?
And then--
Not so much that, but more like, jeez,
if I say this to someone, is she going to tell someone else,
and is that person going to talk to "The National Enquirer"?
It limits your ability to be exactly
honest with people who you don't know as
well as you would want to know.
You know?
There's all these strange little moments.
And also you feel like--
for me, at the time, I was like, no one else
has ever had this experience.
And it definitely did isolate me, I have to say.
OPRAH: Really? - Yeah.
Yeah. - Yeah.
It did.
Not that I was sitting alone, because you're
surrounded by so many people.
But you can feel like you're alone with the experience,
that you're just sort of--
Did it make you bitter at all?
No, I was mostly confused.
I've been mostly confused about it
and then kind of was taken aback quite often.