OK! ICONS WINONA RYDER
AS ‘STRANGER THINGS’ RETURNS, ok! CELEBRATES THE TALENT AND LONGEVITY OF ONE OF ITS STARS, WINONA RYDER
With teen heroes, science lab aliens and telepathy, Netflix sci-fi thriller Stranger Things has been an unexpected hit. As the third series kicks off, Winona Ryder – who plays bereft mother Joyce Byers – admits the response is ‘overwhelming’. She recently said: ‘I hear that people are dressing up as Joyce. I’m like: “What?”’
But stranger things have occurred in Winona’s life. From growing up in a commune to getting caught shoplifting at the height of her career, her history is anything but ordinary. Christened after her hometown, the actress was born in Winona, Minnesota, to writer parents Michael and Cynthia, and had a younger brother, Uri. When she was seven, the family relocated to a ranch commune in Mendocino County, California, before settling just outside San Francisco three years later.
Young Winona flexed her acting muscles at the American Conservatory Theater acting school. She landed her first film role at 13 in Lucas. Impressed by her performance, Tim Burton cast her in her breakout role as Lydia in Beetlejuice. Cult classic Heathers came out the same year.
The brutal side of Hollywood reared its head early for the star. Referring to an audition when she was 15, she says: ‘I was mid-sentence when the casting director said: “Listen, kid. You shouldn’t be an actress. You’re not pretty enough. You should go back to where you came from and go to school. You don’t have it.”’
Winona was undeterred – something she credits to her parents. ‘They’d instilled in me that it was cooler to be an individual and to be unique, and that you don’t want to blend in. So I was lucky in the sense that, for a lot of girls, I think that would have just crushed them,’ she reflects.
While you might think being a teen star would propel you up the popularity
scale at school, for Winona it was the opposite. She once confessed: ‘After
Beetlejuice I thought, this will make things great at school. But it made things worse. They called me a witch.’
Years later, she was accosted by one of her bullies for an autograph in a coffee shop. She recalls: ‘I said: “Do you remember me? I went to Kenilworth. Remember how, in seventh grade, you beat up that kid?” And she said: “Kind of,” and I said: “That was me. Go f*** yourself!”’
While Winona’s courage to be different saw her cruelly targeted at school, it caught the attention of casting directors, as well as fellow actor Johnny Depp. The duo began dating in 1989, becoming engaged shortly afterwards and starred together in
Edward Scissorhands. Their relationship ended three years later, despite the fact that Johnny had famously inked ‘Winona Forever’ on his arm. He has since altered it to read ‘Wino Forever’.
Winona moved on with Soul Asylum frontman Dave Pirner, who reportedly left his girlfriend of 13 years for her. Their three-year romance saw them riding high as Hollywood’s most rock ’n’ roll couple. Winona was thriving professionally, too – her performance in The Age Of Innocence
won her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. She was also nominated for an Oscar for her role in Little Women.
After her rapid rise to fame, the world was shocked when, in 2001, Winona was arrested for shoplifting in Beverly Hills. She was convicted and sentenced to three years supervised probation, 480 hours of community service and fined £3,000. She used it as an opportunity to take a much-needed five-year hiatus from the showbiz scene. ‘There’s a perception that I disappeared in the 2000s – and I did, but only from that world,’ she explains. ‘I won’t get into what happened, but it wasn’t what people think. And it allowed me time that I really needed.’
Perhaps one reason Winona wanted a break from La La Land was her fallout with former best friend, Gwyneth Paltrow. The pair were inseparable in the ’90s, with Gwyneth match-making Winona with Matt Damon. Gwyneth has denied rumours that the pair came to blows when she auditioned for Shakespeare In Love after stumbling across the script at Winona’s home. The role won Gwyneth an Oscar.
Stranger Things has now repositioned Winona, 47, as one of TV’S biggest stars, but she prefers a quiet life. For eight years, she’s been ‘happily’ dating Scott Mackinlay Hahn, founder of sustainable clothing company Loomstate. But don’t expect to hear wedding bells. Although she claims she ‘married’ Keanu Reeves in a ‘legit’ priest-led ceremony while filming Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992, Winona recently said: ‘I’m a serial monogamist. But marriage? I don’t know… When your parents are madly in love for 45 years, your standards are really high.’