Meg Ryan's super-sophisticated, surprisingly un-perky beach house

Meg Ryan's beach house in Martha's Vineyard is featured in June's Elle Decor, and it's not at all the kind of sunny, feminine, somewhat preppy place you'd expect, considering the sweetly quirky girl-next-door characters she so deftly plays in movies.

Instead what you see is a stripped-down, majorly sophisticated, Zen-like sanctuary that's all clean lines and barely there colors. It's soothing and luxurious but decidedly non-flashy, and exudes a certain kind of aesthetic confidence that, come to think of it, makes total sense for a 48-year-old single mother who's adopted a child on her own, starred in scores of blockbusters, and made her own fortune.

It probably also helps that Ryan has had ample experience in decorating, since her acting career has had her moving around like a gypsy for pretty much the past 30-or-so years, buying and redoing homes everywhere she goes:

"I feel like I've been renovating houses my whole life," Ryan says. "I've renovated apartments, lofts, a log cabin in Montana. I'm constantly ripping pages out of magazines in search of inspiration."

Of her current digs, an expansive cedar-shingled spread on seven acres that she fell in love with on a visit to the island, Ryan says, "It's absolutely beautiful, just operatic." With the help of New York-based decorator Marsha Russell of the design firm Satinwood, Ryan bathed the interiors in pure white paint and filled the space with simple-but-cozy furniture contrasted with slick ebony wood floors and dark, industrial accents.

To check out more of Ryan's beach escape, visit elledecor.com.