When Mark Ruffalo and Meg Ryan starred together in the 2003 film In the Cut, Ryan was fresh off the heels of her love scene and rumored affair with Russell Crowe.

This had an effect on Ruffalo, who couldn’t help but compare himself to Crowe when doing s** scenes with Ryan.

Proof of Life, released in 2000, was the movie that initially brought Crowe and Ryan together.

At the time, Ryan was married to Dennis Quad, so her steamy romance with Crowe was all over tabloids.

The two would later go public with their affair coming out of a Tom Cruise party.

Their relationship impacted many areas of their lives, both personally and professionally.

Some claim that even the film they starred in was negatively influenced by their relationship.

Entertainment Weekly once reported that the film didn’t do too well at the box office.

It theorized that this was due to Warner Bros. trying to downplay the adultery angle in Proof of Life.

They feared that the film’s concept, a hostage’s wife cheating on her husband with a negotiator, might have mirrored Crowe’s relationship with Ryan too closely.

Some liberties were taken, like removing a s** scene between Ryan and Crowe in the film.

Even the film’s own director, Taylor Hackford, felt that the affair caused Proof of Life’s downfall.

However, Crowe had a strong response to the director’s opinion.

He called Hackford a “f****** idiot” for thinking that the affair caused the film’s failure.

In the romance film In the Cut, starring alongside Ryan presented its share of challenges for both Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo.

For Ryan, she was stepping out of her perceived comfort zone adopting the s**ual role.

But for Ruffalo, the s** scenes were some of the actor’s most challenging scenes.

The director, Jane Campion, “wanted the character to be such a competent and confident lover that she kept yelling things like: ‘You’re not at school anymore.

You know what you’re doing.’

It was very stressful,” Ruffalo revealed.

The 13 Going on 30 actor later admitted that he was also intimidated by the s** scenes because of Ryan’s previous relationship with Russell Crowe.

“I was really scared,” Ruffalo continued.

“And she was with Russell Crowe.

All I could think of is, ‘What am I going to be like compared to Russell Crowe?”

Meg Ryan credited In the Cut for challenging an image that most people had of her.

“When I look back now, it was definitely easier to be the funny person rather than the pretty person, the s**y person,” Ryan told the New York Times.

In films like Against the Ropes and In the Cut, Ryan played more s**ual characters.

Because of this, she revealed they were roles that some audiences weren’t comfortable with.

“I feel like that might’ve been the last movie I did.

I was surprised by the negative reaction,” Ryan said.

The Sleepless in Seattle star later recalled an interview she did with a talk show host where she found a question he asked offensive.

“I was shocked that he was saying like, ‘How could you be n^ked?’

I don’t think I handled it well.

Since then, I’ve had publicists say to me, ‘You should’ve prepared your audience for your doing something different,'” Ryan said.

“In the Cut was a s**ual thing, and s** throws people.

I’d never presented myself like that before; it was so different from my assigned archetype.”