Meg Ryan, whose warm-and-fuzzy "You've Got Mail" hits theaters Dec. 18, is convinced that making light romantic comedy seem effortless is, well, an effort. "I just find the romantic-comedy genre sort of difficult," Ryan tells EW Online. "It's not a drama, so you can't play the thing for real. It's not a slapstick comedy, so you're not going for huge laughs. You're going for this fairy-tale world in between, this tightrope that you have to walk.... It's like keeping a balloon up in the air all the time, and one wrong idea pops it."

Though Ryan's husband Dennis Quaid has been diving into gritty parts of late with "Savior" and "Switchback" and Ryan herself makes a less-than-cuddly appearance as a drug-addicted stripper in "Hurlyburly," she still believes that the chick-flick genre holds its own against the tough stuff. "As great as it is to go see a movie like 'Savior' or 'Saving Private Ryan,' there's another side that a movie like ['You've Got Mail'] satisfies, and it's just as important," says Ryan. "It's the dream of love, it's the dream of an ideal life."

Given that Ryan takes her romantic comedies so seriously, you might think the star of "Sleepless in Seattle" and "When Harry Met Sally..." would wax ecstatic over the performances that vaulted her to girl-next-door stardom. But when asked to talk about her body of work, she's able to kid around about it -- especially when she remembers the coifs that were meant to establish her as a sweet romantic lead: "Some of that beginning hair in 'When Harry Met Sally...' Some of those hairdos in 'Sleepless in Seattle.' Heaven on earth, oh, my God, with the little barrettes!"

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