Winona Ryder

Winona Laura Horowitz ( wi-NOH-nə; born October 29, 1971), known professionally as Winona Ryder, is an American actress. Having come to attention playing quirky characters in the late 1980s, she achieved success with her more dramatic performances in the 1990s. Ryder's many accolades include a Golden Globe, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and a Grammy Award.

Following her film debut in Lucas (1986), Ryder rose to prominence when she starred in the comedy Beetlejuice (1988). Major parts in Heathers (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Mermaids (1990), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) came next. She earned two consecutive Oscar nominations—Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress—for her portrayals of a socialite in The Age of Innocence (1993) and Jo March in Little Women (1994), respectively. Her subsequent work included starring roles in Reality Bites (1994), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), The Crucible (1996), Alien Resurrection (1997), Celebrity (1998), Girl, Interrupted (1999), and Mr. Deeds (2002).

After the significant negative media attention brought by her 2001 arrest for shoplifting, Ryder took a break from acting in the early 2000s. She returned with roles in films such as Star Trek (2009), Black Swan (2010), When Love Is Not Enough (2010), and The Dilemma (2011). She experienced a career resurgence for her role as Joyce Byers on the Netflix series Stranger Things (2016–2025), for which she received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama (her third Golden Globe nomination). She has since starred in the HBO miniseries The Plot Against America (2020) and the Beetlejuice sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024).

Early life

Winona Laura Horowitz was born in Winona County, Minnesota, on October 29, 1971, the daughter of Cynthia Palmer (née Istas) and Michael D. Horowitz. Cynthia is an author, video producer, and editor, while Michael was an author, editor, publisher, and antiquarian bookseller. He also worked as an archivist for psychologist Timothy Leary, who became Ryder's godfather. Ryder has Irish ancestry through her mother, while her father was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent with roots in Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. Growing up, she visited her paternal grandparents in Brooklyn for Passover every year. Her father later became an atheist and her mother became a Buddhist. She has a younger brother named Urie (in honor of Yuri Gagarin) and, from her mother's prior marriage, a half-brother named Jubal and a half-sister named Sunyata.

Ryder was named after Winona, Minnesota, the closest city to the rural farmhouse in which she was born. She was given the middle name Laura after writer Aldous Huxley's wife Laura, with whom her parents were friends. She derived her stage name from singer Mitch Ryder, of whom her father was a fan. Her family's friends included poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and novelist Philip K. Dick. In 1978, when she was seven years old, she and her family relocated to a commune called Rainbow near Elk, California, where they lived with seven other families on a 300-acre (120 ha) plot of land. As the remote property had no electricity or television sets, Ryder began to devote her time to reading and became an avid fan of J. D. Salinger's book The Catcher in the Rye.

When she was 10, Ryder and her family moved to Petaluma, California. During her first week at Kenilworth Junior High School, she was bullied by children who mistook her for an effeminate boy. In 1983, at the age of 12, Ryder enrolled at the American Conservatory Theater in nearby San Francisco and took her first acting lessons. That same year, she nearly drowned, an experience that caused her to develop aquaphobia. This later caused problems in her career, such as during the filming of underwater scenes in Alien Resurrection (1997), which had to be reshot numerous times. Ryder continued to be bullied in high school, even when she achieved early film success with Beetlejuice (1988). She recalled in 2017, "I remember thinking, 'Ooh, it's like the number one movie. This is going to make things great at school.' But it made things worse. They called me a witch."

Ryder has said that she is a natural brunette who was "really blonde as a kid", and began dyeing her hair blue and purple around the ages of 11 or 12. At the time of her audition for Lucas (1986), her hair had been dyed black and the filmmakers asked her to keep it, which would later almost cost her a breakout role in Heathers (1988).

Career

1985–1990: Early roles and breakthrough

In 1985, Ryder sent a videotaped audition, where she recited a monologue from the novel Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger, to appear in the film Desert Bloom. Although the role went to Annabeth Gish, David Seltzer cast her in his high school drama Lucas (1986), which starred Corey Haim, Charlie Sheen, and Kerri Green. When asked how she wanted her name to appear in the credits, she suggested "Ryder" as her surname because a Mitch Ryder album that belonged to her father was playing in the background. Ryder's next film was Square Dance (1987), where her teenage character creates a bridge between two different worlds—a traditional farm in the middle of nowhere and a large city. She won acclaim for the performance, with the Los Angeles Times calling it "a remarkable debut". Both films were only marginally successful commercially.

After seeing her in Lucas, director Tim Burton cast Ryder in his film Beetlejuice (1988). She starred as a goth teenager whose family moves to a haunted house populated by ghosts played by Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, and Michael Keaton. The film was a success at the box office, and the film as well as Ryder's performance received mostly positive reviews from critics. She has since said that she owes her career to Burton. Also in 1988, she appeared alongside Kiefer Sutherland and Robert Downey Jr. in 1969, a drama about the Vietnam War and the tensions it created in American families.

Ryder next starred in the independent film Heathers (1989). The film, a satirical take on teenage life, featured Ryder and Christian Slater as high school sweethearts who begin killing off popular students. Her agent initially begged her to turn the role down, saying the film would "ruin her career". Critical reaction to the film was largely positive, and Ryder's performance was positively received, with The Washington Post calling Ryder "Hollywood's most impressive ingénue [...] Ryder [...] makes us love her teen-age murderess, a bright, funny girl with a little Bonnie Parker in her. She is the most likable, best-drawn young adult protagonist since the sexual innocent of Gregory's Girl." Despite its critical success, Heathers was a box-office flop, but has achieved the status of a cult film in following decades. However, soon after the film's release, Ryder had an offer to co-star in the 1990 film The Freshman rescinded because the production team was offended by the film's controversial subject matter. Later that year, she starred in the 1989 biopic Great Balls of Fire!, in which she played the 13-year-old bride (and cousin) of rock'n'roll idol Jerry Lee Lewis. The film was a box-office failure and received mixed reviews from critics. Ryder also appeared in 1989 in the music video for Mojo Nixon's "Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child".

Ryder began the 1990s with three starring roles. In the fantasy film Edward Scissorhands (1990), she reunited with director Tim Burton to play the female lead alongside her then-boyfriend Johnny Depp. The film was a significant box office success, grossing $86 million and receiving much critical devotion. Ryder's second role of the year was in the family comedy-drama Mermaids (1990), which co-starred Cher, Bob Hoskins, and Christina Ricci. Mermaids was a moderate box-office success and Ryder's performance was acclaimed; critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "Winona Ryder, in another of her alienated outsider roles, generates real charisma." For her performance, Ryder received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and a National Board Review award for the same category. Following Mermaids, Ryder had the lead role as a troubled teenager in the comedy-drama Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael (1990). The film co-starred Jeff Daniels and was deemed a commercial flop. In 1990, Ryder also made a cameo in Roy Orbison's music video "A Love So Beautiful" with Matthew Modine, and was awarded 'ShoWest's Female Star of Tomorrow' by The National Association of Theatre Owners. She was next slated to appear as Mary Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part III, but withdrew from the project in the beginning of filming in 1990 due to nervous exhaustion.