THROWBACK TO 1993 - SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE

THE ROM-COM CLASSIC IS STILL UTTERLY SWOON-WORTHY THREE DECADES SINCE IT FIRST CAPTURED OUR HEARTS

- Jennie Noonan

Making Sleepless in Seattle in 1993, director Nora Ephron – who died in 2012 at age 71 – deliberately set out to make it timeless. “When she was making it, she was like ‘it has to be a classic,’” actress Rita Wilson, who co-stars in the movie, told Variety. “‘It has to be something that when you see it 25 years from now, you’ll still think the clothes look like you’re not quite sure what period it is.’ And she wanted the music to be reminiscent of a classic movie.”

Thirty years since its premiere, the feel-good film is still captivating hopeless romantics everywhere. The movie tells the story of Annie (played by Meg Ryan, fresh off her success from When Harry Met Sally… ), a journalist who hears widower Sam (Tom Hanks) pour his heart out on talkback radio after his son, Jonah (Ross Malinger), calls in to find his dad a date.

Despite being engaged, she, along with hundreds of other hopeful women across the country, becomes captivated by his story and writes a letter suggesting Sam and Jonah meet her on top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day, inspired by the 1957 tear-jerker An Affair to Remember.

“The choice Nora made about this movie not being just about love but about love in the movies was really clever,” Ryan said in an interview with Sleepless in Seattle producer Gary Foster in 2018. “There’s a real innocence to it.”