Meg Ryan has revealed how she dumped Russell Crowe and broke his heart.
The Hollywood actress hooked up with the New Zealand-born tough guy in 2001 when her marriage to another actor, Dennis Quaid, ended.
Ryan, in an interview with America's InStyle magazine, accused Quaid of not being
faithful to her in their 10 year marriage and she said Crowe was not responsible for her divorce.
"Dennis was not faithful to me for a very long time, and that was very painful," she told InStyle.
"I found out more about that after I was divorced.
"... But Russell didn't break up the marriage."
Ryan, 46, met Crowe on the set of their box office disaster film, Proof of Life, and they were inseparable for a period in 2001, including a trip to Australia.
The actress said she was the one who ended the relationship with Crowe, who at the time had stopped seeing his then on-again, off-again Australian girlfriend, Danielle Spencer.
Crowe married Spencer in 2003.
"I hurt him too at the end," Ryan said.
"I couldn't be in another long relationship, it wasn't the time for that.
"So I got out."
Ryan was known as Hollywood's sweetheart with iconic roles in romantic comedies When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but she was tagged "The Scarlet Woman" when she split with Quaid and dated Crowe.
"My time as a scarlet woman was really interesting," she said.
"As painful as it was, it was also incredibly liberating. Now I was utterly free. I didn't have to care about what people thought."
- AAP
