A talented young actress who has performed a wide variety of roles and has had her problems with the police, Winona Ryder (Winona Horowitz was her given name) was born in Winona, Minnesota, and later raised in a counterculture environment in northern California. Her godfather was Dr. Timothy Leary of LSD fame, and her parents, friends of Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet, edited an anthology of writings on drugs in literature.
As a child, Winona Ryder often watched films with her mother, who ran a nearby revival movie theater. When she was 10 years old, she moved with her parents to Petaluma, California; here, she took acting classes at the American Conservatory Theater and attended public schools, graduating from the high school with a 4.0 grade point average.
At age 13, she auditioned for the film Desert Bloom (1986) but didn't get the part; she did, however, get cast in Lucas (1986) and adopted the stage name Winona Ryder, reportedly because she was listening to her father's Mitch Ryder album when she was called to provide a stage name for the credits. Lucas was followed by another teen flick, Square Dance (1987), but her first noteworthy role was as the deathobsessed daughter in the popular Beetlejuice (1988). Other teen roles followed, the most notable of which was the 13- year-old wife/cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis in the biopic Great Balls of Fire (1989).
Better roles were to follow. Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990) was a hit, and as the 15-year-old daughter of CHER in Mermaids (1990), she attracted a great deal of attention. Unfortunately, performing in three 1990 films took its toll: Winona Ryder caught the flu and had to turn down the meaty role of May Corleone in The Godfather: Part III (also 1990). In 1991, she appeared in Night on Earth, an omnibus film. Jim Jarmusch wrote a part for her as a tattooed cabbie who wants to be a mechanic.
The following year, she was cast as the innocent Mina Murray/Elisabeta in FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA's Bram Stoker's Dracula, the first of the film adaptations she would appear in. In MARTIN SCORSESE's adaptation of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (1993), she was May Welland, the innocent woman who wins Newland Archer (DANIEL DAY-LEWIS) and keeps him through a series of deceptive stratagems; and in The House of the Spirits (1993), an adaptation of Isabel Allende's novel, she was the rebellious daughter in love with a revolutionary, played by ANTONIO BANDERAS.
As the unconventional Jo March in the 1994 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Winona Ryder won an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. She dedicated her performance to Polly Klaas, a young girl from Petaluma who had been kidnapped and murdered; she has continued to support the Polly Klaas Foundation. After appearing in How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and Boys (1996), mediocre films at best, she got the part of Abigail "Abby" Williams, the ringleader of the hysterical, sexually repressed girls in the 1996 adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
She became the personification of evil in the film. The actress was up to the role, holding her own against the likes of actor Paul Scofield. As the girl who informs on her enemies, Winona Ryder convincingly displayed a cold-hearted viciousness and a duplicitous nature. After a number of roles that were not worthy of her talents (Lost Souls was shot in 1998, for example, and New Line Cinema kept it on the shelves for two years; Boys grossed less than $1 million in 1996), Winona Ryder made an appearance in WOODY ALLEN's Celebrity (1998), along with dozens of other celebrities who worked with Allen in a film that barely made $5 million.
Winona Ryder got rave reviews, moreover, for Girl, Interrupted (1999), serving also as executive producer for the project, which was four years in the making. Stephen Holden of the New York Times called this Winona Ryder's "most penetrating screen performance," but her work was ultimately eclipsed by that of her costar, Angelina Jolie, who won the Best Supporting Actress ACADEMY AWARD, a Golden Globe, and the Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2000, Winona Ryder starred with RICHARD GERE in Autumn in New York, a romantic film directed by Joan Chen, and in 2002, she extended her popularity by working with Adam Sandler in Mr. Deeds.
In 2002, Winona Ryder had some unwelcome publicity as a result of a shoplifting incident in Beverly Hills that caused her arrest and splashed her name across tabloid headlines. She was released on bail and sported "Free Winona" T-shirts before she was found guilty of vandalism and grand theft on November 6, 2002. A month later she was sentenced to 480 hours of community service, three years' probation, $3,700 in fines, and $6,355 in restitution for her arrest on shoplifting charges.
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