Meg Ryan on Quaid, Crowe and No Longer Being "America's Sweetheart"

Actress dishes that ex-husband wasn't faithful and denies Russell Crowe had anything to do with the breakup of her marriage

Meg Ryan is finally opening up about some of the hurly-burly that has surrounded her personal life—most notably, the brief romance with her Proof of Life costar Russell Crowe and the subsequent dissolution of her marriage to Dennis Quaid.

"Dennis was not faithful to me for a long time, and that was very painful," the actress reveals to In Style magazine. "I found out more about that after I was divorced."

She's quick to point out that while Crowe "didn't break up the marriage," the end of her 10-year union with Quaid in 2001 "was also very liberating."

So liberating, in fact, that Ryan decided to temporarily remove herself from the media microscope by taking some time away from moviemaking to both travel and focus on Jack, her 16-year-old son with Quaid, and daughter Daisy, whom she adopted nearly three years ago from China.

But Ryan has slowly been making her way back into the spotlight, currently starring in the ensemble flick The Women.

And while she may no longer hold the Tinseltown title "America's Sweetheart," she's also perfectly content to be done with that label.

"It's an old-fashioned idea, so anachronistic. I understood it was a compliment about being lovable, and it felt nice," says Ryan. "But it also felt, after a time, like ideas were being projected onto me that had nothing to do with me. The girl next door to what? I never felt like a very conventional person."