Winona Ryder turns 50: the rise, fall and resurgence of a 90s icon

If there is a career that has had ups and downs in Hollywood, it is that of Winona Ryder. Although now best remembered for her role as Joyce Byers in “Stranger Things” (2016) and for her role in the miniseries “The Plot Against America” (2020), her most popular moment occurred in the late 80s and during the 90s, where she gave us classics like“ Beetlejuice ”(1988 ), “The Age of Innocence” (1993), “Little Women” (1994) – the latter two that earned him Oscar nominations – and “Girl, Interrupted” (1999). With the actress turning half a century on this planet on October 29, we review her career and remember the incident that began her decline.

Winona de Winona, Minnesota

Winona Laura Horowitz was born on October 29, 1971 in the city of Winona, Minnesota, the daughter of writer Michael D. Horowitz and video producer Cynthia Palmer. Her birth in the town that gave him his name was fortuitous.

“We were literally passing through. I was what was called a shoelace baby: in the early 70s, if you were on the road and a baby was premature, you weren’t near a hospital and you had no experience in midwifery – or you were an advanced parent. panic – what they told you is to take your shoelace out and boil it, and that’s how you tie the umbilical cord,” she recalled in a 2020 Vogue interview.

Winona’s parents were members of the intellectual world, counting among their friends the writer Aldous Huxley, the poet Allen Ginsberg and the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, so the young woman grew up surrounded by literature. One book that particularly fascinated her was “The Catcher in the Rye,” the JD Salinger novel made infamous for the obsession of John Lennon’s killer Mark Chapman.

In 1978, when the future actress was seven years old, the Horowitzes moved to California to live in a commune. Three years later they moved back to the Californian town of Petaluma, where Winona spent the rest of her childhood. In love with acting since she was young, in 1983 she began her acting classes at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.

Despite her future success on the films, Winona’s youth was not easy and she suffered from bullying during her school years due to her androgynous appearance. In one of the worst incidents, revealed to then-Harper’s Bazaar journalist Henry Alford in 2000, the interpreter was brutally beaten by her schoolmates shortly after starting high school.

“He was wearing an old boy’s suit from the Salvation Army store. I had a hall pass so I went to the (girls) bathroom. I heard people say to me ‘hey, motherfucker’. They hit my head against a locker. I fell to the ground and they started kicking me. They had to sew my head up.” Said Winona, who added that to top it all, it was she who was punished by the school, not the ones who attacked her.

Ryder’s Origin

In 1985 she got her first opportunity to reach the big screen when the filmmaker David Seltzer saw in her the perfect candidate for his film “Lucas” (1986), where she plays a girl in love with the eponymous protagonist, played by the actor Corey Haim.

It was also there that she decided to use the stage name ‘Winona Ryder’ for the first time, in honor of Mitch Ryder, lead singer of The Detroit Wheels, and one of his father’s favorite musicians. A year later she returned to the screen with “Square Dance” (1987), which, although it was not a great success at the box office, raised her profile as an actress.

What did make her career take off was “Beetlejuice”(1988), a film directed by Tim Burton in which she played Lydia, a teenage girl with a propensity for the macabre whose family moves into a haunted house, sharing the stage with Michael Keaton. It was not the only major film released that year, starring alongside Christian Slater in the school black comedy “Heathers” (1988).

Interestingly, her newfound fame didn’t make Winona’s time at school any easier, and in an interview with The New York Times she revealed that after Tim Burton’s movie came out They started calling her a “witch”.

Winona Ryder was able to get her revenge years later, noting that one of the girls who beat her asked her for an autograph years later, which gave her an opportunity to send her flying (figuratively).

The last year of the 1980s was particularly important for Winona, who met actor Johnny Depp during the premiere of the movie “Great Balls of Fire!”, where the actress had a leading role.

Despite the age difference – Ryder was 17 and Depp 25 – the performers began a relationship that soon turned into a three-year engagement before dissolving, during which time they were one of the couples most scrutinized by Hollywood paparazzi.

But far from sentimental problems, Winona’s career took off throughout the 90s, participating in films such as “Edward Scissorhands“(1990), where she collaborated with Burton again and shared the screen with her then partner Depp,”Bram Stoker’s Dracula”(1992) by Francis Ford Coppola.

A year later she got her first Oscar nomination for his role in “The Age of Innocence“(1993) by Martin Scorsese, then repeating the feat a year later by playing Jo March in the version of”Little Women” (1994) por Gillian Armstrong.

Not all her films were successful, and he also participated in clunkers such as “Boys” (1996) and the disappointing third in the “Alien” saga entitled “Alien: Resurrection” (1997). Still, Winona Ryder was able to close the millennium by starring in – and producing – the movie “Girl, Interrupted”(1999), which awarded him an Oscar, but to Angelina Jolie. By October 2000, the actress received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Stealing opportunities

At the peak of the race an incident occurred that changed his course. On December 12, 2001, Ryder was arrested by the Los Angeles police after a camera caught her stealing accessories from the exclusive Saks Fifth Avenue store valued at US $ 4,700.

The incident did not pass to greater and the star was only sentenced to three years of probation, 480 hours of community service, as well as a fine of US $ 3,700 and a restitution of US $ 6,355 for those affected. Nevertheless, the incident made her the talk of the entertainment press again.

Additionally, it caused problems in her career not only because of her reputation, but also hindered necessary issues such as getting insured for the filming of a movie. These problems, coupled with the health problems she had experienced in recent years, led the actress to decide to retire from acting for three years.

“On a psychological level, I think I must be at a time when all I wanted was to stop.” The actress told Porter magazine about the incident in 2016. “I’m not going to go into details about what happened, but it was not what people think. And it wasn’t the robbery of the century either! But it allowed me time to find out what it was I really needed, I went back to San Francisco and I dedicated myself to things that, let’s say I had other interests”.

Her decision to stay away from acting did not take her away from the screens, and in 2002 she appeared in two films: the Adam Sandler comedy “Mr. Deeds ”and the science fiction film“ Simone ”opposite Al Pacino, both filmed prior to his arrest. Additionally that year she was the host of the comedy program Saturday Night Live.

Return to the ring

Following her return to acting, Winona Ryder participated in smaller projects, beginning with a brief non-credit appearance in Asia Argento’s controversial film “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things” (2004), followed by the comedy “The Darwin Awards” (2006) and the science fiction film “A Scanner Darkly” (2006).

Her return to major productions occurred in 2009, when he played Spock’s mother, Amanda Grayson, in the remake of “Star Trek” directed by JJ Abrams. It was followed a year later with a participation in Darren Aronofsky’s thriller “Black Swan” (2010), as well as a third collaboration with Tim Burton with the animated film “Frankenweenie” (2012).

It is also around this time that Winona finds more success on the small screen, starring in the award-winning television movie “When Love is Not Enough” (2010) – which earned him a SAG Awards nomination – and in the miniseries “Show Me a Hero” (2015).

But it was not until her appearance in the Netflix series “Stranger Things” (2016), where she plays the grieving mother Joyce Byers, that the star’s fame returned to its previous five years, a situation that showed that it was not a stroke of luck thanks to his critically acclaimed performance in the HBO miniseries “The Plot Against America”.

At the moment, the actress’s career seems to continue not only for the fourth season of “Stranger Things” and the talks of releasing a sequel to “Beetlejuice”, which would reunite her with Michael Keaton. Additionally, Deadline confirmed that Ryder will star in the thriller “The Cow,” the directorial debut of screenwriter Eli Horowitz.

But far from these considerations of fortune and fame, the actress seems happy to just be happy to continue working at her job.

“For many other reasons, now I feel that there has been a change in my life, possibly because of my age and a feeling of liberation from being able to play roles according to this,” she told the Times magazine in 2016.

“I also feel like now is other people’s time, and that makes me happy.”