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Winona Ryder

Born 1971-10-29 in Olmsted County, MN
A Producer
An Actor

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In Brief:

Winona Ryder is an Academy Award-nominated American actress. She is widely known for her work in the cult classic Heathers, and many other films such as Girl, Interrupted, Little Women and Edward Scissorhands.

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Bio:

Ryder was born in Olmsted County, Minnesota to Cindy Istas and Michael Horowitz, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Romania. She was named for the nearby city of Winona. Her father's family was originally named 'Tomchin', however Ryder has stated that they were wrongly assigned the name of the family that they were travelling with when they arrived at Ellis Island, in 1906. She has a younger brother Yuri (named after Yuri Gagarin), an older half-brother Jubal and an older half-sister Sunyata. Notable family friends included her godfather Timothy Leary and beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

When she was seven years old she and her family resided at Rainbow, a commune near Elk, California, where they lived with seven other families on a 300-acre (1.2 km²) plot of land. As the remote property had no electricity or televisions, Ryder took to reading. Her mother did, however, show her some films on a screen in the barn, which perhaps led her to develop an interest in what would later make up her career. At age 10 the family moved again to Petaluma, California. She was harassed her first week of junior high school there when a group of bullies mistook her for an effeminate, scrawny boy. This led her to be schooled at home that year, but she also spent time attending the American Conservatory Theater in nearby San Francisco, where she started taking acting lessons.

In 1985, Ryder sent a video audition to appear in the film Desert Bloom but was rejected. However, David Seltzer, a writer and director, soon noticed her and cast her for his 1986 film Lucas for a role of a teenage outcast, falling in love, but ignored, by the main character. When asked how she wanted her name to appear in the credits, she suggested Ryder as a Mitch Ryder album of her father's played in the background.

Her next movie was Square Dance (1987) (called "a remarkable debut" by The Los Angeles Times), where her teenage character creates a bridge between two alien worlds/plot devices - a traditional farm in the middle of nowhere and a Big City. Her role considered the question of how much of our behavior derives from our genetic background and how much is influenced by society (the nature vs. nurture debate)? In addition, what are the ethical implications of this struggle? Winona was able to consider these questions further in The Age of Innocence.

Her breakthrough film is generally considered to be Tim Burton's 1988 film Beetlejuice, in which she played a goth teenager named Lydia suffering from depression induced by the extreme consumer worldview her parents represent, who comes to live in a haunted house (the haunting performed by Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin and Michael Keaton). She is the only human being among the players able to feel strong empathy and sympathy toward the ghosts and their situation between the living and the afterworld. The movie was a commercial and media success.

In 1989, she starred in a now cult movie - Heathers, which her agent initially opposed. Her character is opposed to violence as a way to resolve conflicts and is able to express her views by stopping major violent accidents from happening. Again her character struggles, forced to choose between the will of society and her own heart. She resolves the battle by choosing neither and by playing the parties against one another, so she can be left alone to determine the course of her life. In the same year she did Great Balls of Fire, playing the thirteen-year-old bride of Jerry Lee Lewis.

In 1990, Winona played a primary role in another Burton project, Edward Scissorhands, alongside her then-boyfriend Johnny Depp. It is her only movie, other than 2002's Mr. Deeds, in which she had the naturally blonde hair which she has had dyed black since childhood.

She withdrew from her role in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Part III, after feeling exhausted from recent roles — she finished two somewhat related movies Mermaids (film) (with Cher, Christina Ricci, Bob Hoskins and Michael Schoeffling) and Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael (with Jeff Daniels), both shot in 1990 and both stressing the challenge of coming to terms with oneself.

In 1991, she played a taxi driver who wants to become a mechanic (Night on Earth), challenging society's widely accepted gender roles.

In 1992, she starred in the dual roles of Dracula's reincarnated, love interest Mina Harker and Dracula's past lover Princess Elisabeta, in Bram Stoker's Dracula, a project she brought to director Francis Ford Coppola's attention.

The next year she appeared in The Age of Innocence (alongside Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis), a film based on a novel by Edith Wharton and helmed by director Martin Scorsese, whom Ryder considers the best director. She plays a young woman, captured in plots within plots within plots of the society where every sentence pronounced has at least three different meanings. Her surroundings reflect the interpersonal and societal conflicts raging within and around her via many scenic references and multi-layered utterances. Her role in this movie won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as an Academy Award nomination.

Next she starred in How to Make an American Quilt (1995). In this film her character is again forced to choose between the will of the "quilting bee" and her personal desires. This film was followed by Boys, (1996), a film in which self seems to be pitted against the whole world, with love her only true friend and guide. The movie also considered the credibility of different interpretations of reality, a theme she later explored in Lost Souls. She received yet another nomination in 1994 with Little Women, based on the classic novel of the same name.

In the same year she starred in a cult movie, widely-and simplistically-hailed by the press as a "portrait of Generation X" - Reality Bites. Her character had to choose between the voice of reason and her heart in the form of two possible lovers, one a generous, somewhat educated if overly earnest documentary filmmaker played by Ben Stiller and a free-spirited, caring if somewhat cynical leader of an alternative band, a character played by Ethan Hawke. She is at the same time struggling with life in a world obsessed with materialism and dismissing those interested in more ethereal or philosophical concerns.

In 1996 she starred in Al Pacino's debut as a director, Looking for Richard, and also in The Crucible with Daniel Day-Lewis (1996), a movie about the Salem witch trials and the hysteria which prompted the deaths of many without trials. The movie was praised by critics but was not commercially successful.

Soon afterward, Ryder accepted a role as a humanoid robot in the 1997 film Alien: Resurrection alongside the Alien series star Sigourney Weaver. Having grown up on the Alien franchise, she signed before having even read a script. Celebrity (1998), her next film, features a reference to a scene from her earlier film Night on Earth - about considering alternative routes in life.

In 1999, she performed in and served as executive producer for Girl, Interrupted, based on the autobiography of Susanna Kaysen. Ryder was deeply attached to the film, considering it her "child of the heart"; she played the Kaysen character who had a borderline personality disorder and was calm and reserved in contrast to the supporting role enacted by Angelina Jolie of a sociopath full of sexual energy and prone to dramatic episodes. It was Jolie's role which captured the attention of the public and the Academy.

She went on to portray the fragile, beautiful, young, talented and doomed love interest of Richard Gere's character in the 2000 romance Autumn in New York.

In the same year she played a sister (a nun) of a secret society loosely connected to Catholic Church determined to prevent Armageddon - Lost Souls. The character struggles between the world (including the Church) laughing at the supernatural, her own beliefs based on personal experience and uncertainty between seemingly obvious empirical evidence and her doubts in her own sanity, and a questionable ability to reason or even perceive correctly. The movie was not a success, lost in a myriad of others considering the Millennium FUD.

In 2002, Ryder appeared in two films, one a romantic comedy entitled Mr. Deeds (alongside Adam Sandler), where she played a cynical reporter for an unscrupulous television program, and the other an episodic role in S1m0ne, in which she depicted a glamorous star who is replaced by a computer simulated actress because of the clandestine machinations of a director (played by Al Pacino).

In 2006, Winona will appear in two films. After a long dry spell, the actress will portray Donna Hawthorne in Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly, a futuristic movie based on Philip K. Dick's famous novel. The cast also includes Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr and Woody Harrelson. Live action scenes have been transformed with rotoscope software and the film will be entirely animated. She will also star in the comedy The Darwin Awards, with Joseph Fiennes.

On December 12, 2001, Winona Ryder was arrested for shoplifting thousands of dollars' worth of designer clothes and accessories at Saks Fifth Avenue department store in Beverly Hills, California.

Los Angeles District Attorney Stephen Cooley established a team of eight prosecutors to prosecute this case and seized the opportunity to prosecute the actress aggressively, charging her with four felonies in what was described by The Guardian (UK) as a show trial because of the publicity demanded by Cooley. Ryder hired noted defense attorney Mark Geragos and mounted a defense to fight the charges. Negotiations for a plea bargain failed at the end of summer 2002. As noted by Joel Mowbray in The National Review, the prosecution had no intention to allow the actress to plead out with misdemeanors, an option offered to more than 5,000 other defendants in similar cases between 1999 and 2001.

During the trial, she was also accused of using drugs without valid prescriptions; according to a probation report that can be found on The Smoking Gun website, she had up to 37 prescriptions filled by 20 doctors, using 6 different aliases, in a three-year period. The defense produced the prescriptions for the drugs that the police found in her purse, and the prosecution consequently dropped the charge. Ryder was convicted of grand theft and vandalism, but the jury acquitted her on the third felony charge (burglary). In December 2002, she was sentenced to three years' probation, 480 hours of community service, $3,700 in fines and $6,355 in restitution to Saks and the judge ordered the actress to attend psychological and drug counselling. The charges were eventually reviewed, and the felonies reduced to misdemeanors, on June 18, 2004.

Her long engagements with Johnny Depp (four years), David Pirner (three years) and Matt Damon (three years) are quite famous. (During their relationship, Depp got a tattoo on his arm reading "Winona Forever," which he had altered to "Wino Forever" after their breakup.) According to various sources, most of them tabloids and gossip columns, Winona Ryder has also dated actors Daniel Day-Lewis, David Duchovny, Val Kilmer, Chris Noth, Jimmy Fallon and Christian Slater, as well as musicians Conor Oberst, Ryan Adams, Evan Dando, Adam Duritz, Franz Hemingbeck, Dave Grohl, Page Hamilton, Beck Hansen, Jay Kay, Rhett Miller and Pete Yorn.

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Filmography:

• Alpha Numeric (2007)
• Sex and Death 101 (2007)
• A Scanner Darkly (2006)
• The Darwin Awards (2006)
• The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2004)
• S1m0ne (2002)
• Mr. Deeds (2002)
• Zoolander (2001)
• Lost Souls (2000)
• Autumn in New York (2000)
• Girl Interrupted (1999) (Also Executive Producer)
• Celebrity (1998)
• Alien: Resurrection (1997)
• The Crucible (1996)
• Looking for Richard (1996)
• Boys (1996)
• How to Make an American Quilt (1995)
• Little Women (1994)
• Reality Bites (1994)
• The House of Spirits (1993)
• The Age of Innocence (1993)
• Bram Stroker's Dracula (1992)
• Night of Earth (1991)
• Mermaids (1990)
• Edward Scissorhands (1990)
• Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael (1990)
• Great Balls of Fire (1989)
• Heathers (1989)
• 1969 (1988)
• Beetlejuice (1988)
• Square Dance (1987)
• Lucas (1986)

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