I am often asked about Timothy Leary, who was he, and what was his connection with Winona Ryder. Timothy Leary was the key figure in the 1960s counterculture movement and would probably be best described as a social renegade before it was fashionable to be one. He was kicked out of the West Point Military Acadmey and also dismissed from Harvard University for experimenting with hallucinating drugs on his students, and that of course, won him both notoriety and jail time. It was that whole “turn on, tune in and drop out” thing that made Leary a controversial figure some years before the entire world felt the need to go to San Francisco and put flowers in its hair.

The connection with Winona and Timothy Leary was that he was her godfather, and that came about three months after Winona was born when her father Michael Horowitz, who by then was working both as a bookseller of counterculture literature and also as Leary’s archivist.

Read more at Nigel Goodall blog.

Ryder’s expressive, big eyes and penchant for sad, relatable characters made her super lovable. As the young emo-goth Lydia Deetz in ‘Beetlejuice,’ one of her first roles, she gained stand-out praise alongside established actors Michael Keaton and Alec Baldwin.

Her follow-up, as Veronica Sawyer, in the super-dark high school satire ‘Heathers,’ solidified her place as a movie star.

In 1994, Ryder won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an Academy Award nomination for her role in ‘The Age of Innocence.’ She was nominated again for the Best Actress Oscar in 1995 for ‘Little Women.’ Then she showed real chops in 1999′s ‘Girl, Interrupted,’ holding her own against Angelina Jolie’s tour-de-force performance and really making an impact on audiences. In 2000, Ryder was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But Ryder fell out of public favor fast after an infamous shoplifting incident in 2001. Ryder was accused of stealing $5,500 in designer clothing and merchandise from a Saks Fifth Avenue department store. The crime was caught on a security camera, and it seemed obvious that Ryder was guilty.

At the trial, it was said that Ryder showed up at the store prepared to shoplift. She told multiple different stories about why — she was preparing for a role, she thought Saks would charge her later. Prosecutors said she was doing it for “sheer thrill.” Not very endearing.

Ryder was sentenced to three years probation, which she served until 2005. But worse than the actual charges was the media circus surrounding her trial. Ryder was torn apart in the press for being another spoiled Hollywood loony. Her promising career took a backseat as every headline mentioned her “sticky-fingered” tendencies.

Needless to say, Ryder suffered a major career setback and took a four-year hiatus from serious acting.

She then appeared as a woman who has sex with a ventriloquist’s dummy in one of the shorts in the 2007 comedy ensemble film ‘The Ten’ (the movie went mostly unnoticed). Then, in 2009, she made a small but more buzzed-about big-screen comeback as Spock’s mother in the reboot of ‘Star Trek.’

This year, however, may be the year that Ryder has a true comeback.

Now 39, Ryder was nominated for two 2010 SAG Awards for lead actress in ‘When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story’ and for her part in the cast of ‘Black Swan.’ And the Ron Howard comedy, ‘The Dilemma,’ starring Ryder, Vince Vaughn, Kevin James and Jennifer Connelly, premieres this month, on January 14.

‘Black Swan,’ a Darren Aronofsky film about a stressed-out ballerina who might actually be turning into a swan in preparation for her lead role in ‘Swan Lake,’ sees Ryder playing two old favorites: crazy and dramatic. Her character, Beth, a former ballerina replaced by Natalie Portman’s character because she’s gotten too old for the part, gives Ryder the chance to act her at her best. Though the role is small, her intensity permeated every scene.

In the CBS TV movie ‘When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story,’ Ryder took on the role of the wife of Bill Wilson, one of the co-founder’s of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Her upcoming part as Kevin James’ cheating wife in ‘The Dilemma’ is a departure for her — comedy isn’t a usual form for Ryder. Her last attempt at the rom-com genre was the ill-received Adam Sandler flick ‘Mr. Deeds,’ which was bad through no fault of Ryder’s.

But Ryder seems to be slowly winning back public favor and if ‘The Dilemma’ makes good on its stellar cast (Vaughn, Connelly) and legendary director (Howard), it could be another step for Ryder toward a total recovery.

Her next movie, ‘Frankenweenie 3D,’ is supposed to come out in 2012. Since the film is animated, Ryder’s role is solely as voice talent, but it once again pairs her with director Burton, with whom she did her best work in the ’80s and ’90s.

The reason Ryder’s shoplifting hiccup was such a media curiousity was in part because she was so beloved. Audiences want to like her. Though I’m not a huge fan, I’ve never been disappointed to see her name attached to a film.

Will Ryder’s work in 2010 win our love in 2011 and beyond? Or will one mistake prove to have cost her her prior acclaim for good? We hope it’s the former. How very!

Source: Moviefone.com

It took six years off, presumable prescription drug treatment, and a lot of community service for Winona Ryder to make it back. And it’s a testament to the enduring appeal of her early work that three appropriately quirky supporting parts—as Commander Spock’s artificially-aged mother in Star Trek, as a deranged ballerina in Black Swan, and as Kevin James’ cheating wife upgrading to Channing Tatum in The Dilemma, in theaters on Friday—was all it took to resurrect a certain kind of American’s crush on Ryder, for GQ to declare as Johnny Depp once did, that it’s Winona Forever all over again.

This Ryder revival’s based on nostalgia for her indie roles as a popular girl seduced into murder in Heathers and a suburban girl who falls for an artificial boy in Edward Scissorhands, her position as a kind of Golden Age forerunner to the Manic Pixie Dream Girls. But Winona worshippers might do well to revisit the 1994 adaptation of Little Women, the movie that garnered Ryder a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Some purists might conclude that the fact that Ryder’s nods come for that, and for her supporting role in another period piece, The Age of Innocence, proves that the Academy was too timid to recognize Ryder’s edgier work in dark comedies like Heathers, or that Ryder was eclipsed by actresses better able to tap an undercurrent of wildness, like Angelina Jolie, who starred in Girl, Interrupted, with Ryder. But Little Women is a terrific movie in its own right, one of the best adaptations of a literary classic, and Ryder is tremendously good in it.

Little Women is a powerful, totemic novel for those who love it. It’s regularly adapted into other forms and reinterpreted by other novelists who have sought to bring the story of four sisters into the present day—as Katharine Weber did in The Little Women—or give an inner life to the main characters’ largely absent father—as Geraldine Brooks did to far better effect in March. But it’s not the easiest sell to skeptics, or to boys. Little Women is a decidedly female novel, and a decidedly Christian one, following as it does four very different women’s routes through a literalized Pilgrim’s Progress. The novel meanders, as life tends to. And the main character turns down a marriage proposal that seems perfect for her, only to wed a man Louisa May Alcott conjured up both to satisfy and provoke readers who demanded that she find a match for Jo.

The movie makes no radical changes to Alcott’s novel (though it does jettison the Pilgrim’s Progress frame device). Instead, Gillian Armstrong succeeds by playing to both Ryder’s and Alcott’s talents, embracing Jo March’s radicalism and directing it, rather than sublimating it. In the novel, Jo’s temper is a nigh-fatal flaw: she’s punished for it by the near-death of one of her sisters, and turns away from her great love out of fear of it. The movie lets Ryder crackle with black-eyed rage when one of her sisters burns the only manuscript of her novel and the agony of confusion after she refuses the marriage proposal. But it gives her joy greater heights, too, letting her quote Whitman with a fellow boarding-house resident Friedrich Bhaer, and giving her the challenge of talking women’s suffrage with young men in New York. While in the novel that same boarding-house resident tames her, he seduces her in the movie, telling her, “I think we are all hopelessly flawed.”

It helps that Anderson transformed that fellow border from a cheerful, disheveled, innocent German into something infinitely sexier simply by casting Gabriel Byrne to play him. Byrne preserves the essence of Bhaer, even as he elevates the character as a worthy partner for Jo–even when he’s taking her hand back stage at an opera house, he’s casting a quick glance to the side to make sure his gesture of affection is all right. In the novel, Jo’s marriage to Friedrich is something of a compromise. But in the movie it’s maturation, an arrival at a true partnership. Anderson may give viewers a happier ending than Alcott gave her readers, but the movie also gives them a more complex, passionate woman than Alcott’s experimental educator and model Christian mother.

Winona Ryder became an icon by playing girls who were weird and, as Alex Pappademas put it in GQ, “overly dramatic.” And as she’s found her way back to the screen, she’s built on that reputation. At 39, Ryder’s odd-young-girl days are, and probably should be, behind her. But she proved at 23 that she could expertly embody one of the complete women in American literature. Growing up was good for Jo March on the page. If Ryder wants to follow that path, her second act could be great on screen.

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Best News
I really can’t tell you what was the most exciting news from 2010. Her good reviews for “When Love Is Not Enough”, she joining a Ron Howard’s movie, the buzz around her comeback because the performance in Black Swan, a SAG and Satellite Awards nomination, or she working together with Tim Burton again. I really cannot choose one, can you?

Favorite Photoshoot

The three shoots she did this year (for Elle, for GQ and the portraits done to Black Swan at TIFF)… all amazing. But when I saw the GQ one, my heart did miss a beat for a while. So beautiful.

Favorite Event Look

Favorite Hairstyle

Favorite Interview
The one done to GQ was the better IMO. Papademas and Winona talked about old subjects without that stupid jokes that came with it.

Best Quote

I’m the type who’d rather not work than work on something I’m not into. I’ve done that a couple of times, and I feel like I can totally see it in my performance.

Favorite Project
Black Swan. I was able to watch “The Lois Wilson History” and was a dramatic and solid interpretation. A very good movie with Winona and Barry Pepper doing an awesome job, both. But “Black Swan”, which I just saw it, is electric. And breathtaking. Winona has just a few minutes on screen, and can blow your mind with her performance.

The Cameo Queen: Winona Ryder
It’s been two decades since Heathers and Edward Scissorhands, but Winona Ryder proved this year that she’s definitely still got it. Though she wasn’t onscreen long, Ryder still managed to deliver one of the year’s most memorable performances as an ousted prima ballerina in Black Swan. She played her creepy, menacing role to such perfection that we found ourselves looking over our shoulders as we left the theater-just in case she happened to be lurking behind us. This may be the start of a legit comeback for Ryder, who has booked upcoming roles in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie, Ron Howard’s The Dilemma, and Armand Mastroianni’s Gardel.

Quotable in 2010: “Sometimes I’ll watch a movie, and it’s got some big star in it playing a working-class person, and the character is in a grocery store, and you can kind of tell, from just watching the scene, that this actor doesn’t do their own shopping. So you have to have some sense of reality. That’s why, at the height of everything, I used to go to the Laundromat to do my laundry-just because I had to sort of maintain,” Ryder said in October.

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As announced, Winona is featured in the January issue of GQ magazine. The official website has posted the article and the breathtaking photoshoot. She can’t be more beautiful, can she?

Winona Forever
Is it possible we will always be obsessed with Winona Ryder? If she keeps doing films such as Black Swan, the answer is yes. Alex Pappademas talks with our eternal crush

Winona Ryder has this problem, and as problems go it’s pretty solidly in the first-world category, she knows, but it’s a problem, still: She’ll be having a conversation with somebody—an interesting conversation, the kind two regular people have when they discover a mutual admiration for, like, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral or something. And then suddenly the person she’s having the conversation with will say something to her that reminds her that (a) she is Winona Ryder, the famous actress, and (b) nearly everyone she meets already has “this whole idea” of who she is, already thinks they know everything there is to know about her, more or less. And inevitably when this happens, she starts thinking about what it is people think they know about her, which is never a good idea, and the conversation never really recovers.

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In director Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, a disturbing psycho-thriller set in the physically harrowing world of professional ballet, it’s slightly jarring to see Winona Ryder take on such a small part, not to mention see her play an aging principal dancer, Beth, who has been strong-armed into retirement by her New York company and tidily replaced by Nina, an ambitious innocent portrayed by a gaunt Natalie Portman. The film takes on a creepy hallucinogenic bent, focusing on Nina’s mental unraveling as she obsessively prepares for her starmaking turn in the company’s risqué version of Swan Lake. Ryder can’t be on-screen for more than 20 minutes—her role lands somewhere between cameo and supporting actress. And yet, as pallid as ever, with impossibly dark eyes that dominate her valentine-shaped face, she manages to make her presence seem big. The movie wouldn’t have the same palpable tension without her.

It might be that the metacasting—a real-life former ingenue playing a former ingenue—is simply effective. But there’s a potent alchemy at work that is Ryder’s alone. When she appears in Black Swan, it’s impossible not to be awash in nostalgia for her charmingly twisted, compulsively watchable films (even in Beetle Juice, her all-in-black teen ghost whisperer made Ryder a heroine for legions of goth-positive girls). That, combined with her stirringly executed performance (there’s a scene in which Ryder takes a nail file to those perfectly hollowed out cheeks that will haunt anyone with a heartbeat for days), makes it difficult not to want more of her. Even Aronofsky, who had Ryder on set for less than two weeks, felt the pull of her legacy. “There’s one scene with her, where I think I did 20 or 30 takes, which is a lot,” he says. “But the reason I did so many is because I couldn’t believe that was all [the time] I was going to get with Winona Ryder. I really just wanted to keep working with her.”

When Ryder calls from her L.A. home, she mentions she’s smoking a cigarette on the deck, having just watched Spirits of the Dead, the 1968 art-house collaboration directed by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini. “My friend and I are trying to break down these obviously symbolic moments,” Ryder says. “That movie’s nuts. Finally, we’re just like, ‘Oh, the fashion’s incredible!’ ” What is pleasantly surprising about Ryder is that she’s every bit the amiable odd bird you’d think she’d be. Her upbringing undoubtedly shaped her: Her parents, stalwarts of the San Francisco counterculture, hung with Allen Ginsberg and John Lennon. Ryder’s father, Michael Horowitz, is a rare-books dealer and Timothy Leary’s archivist. “My dad just gave me [Leary’s] watch for my birthday,” she says. “It’s called the Borel Kaleidoscope; it’s, like, this interesting kind of watch that when you look at it, you can stare at it forever—it moves in this weird way.” She’s a voracious reader (both Mom and Dad are writers) and begins a lot of her sentences with “Have you ever read that book?” It makes sense that much of her source material comes from the classics: Ryder’s May Welland in Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence was as phenomenally intricate on-screen as she was on paper, and her Josephine March in Little Women earned Ryder a much-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Actress in 1995. As an avid collector of first editions, she’s a big believer in “paper and pen” and writing letters, and has yet to use the iPad Ron Howard recently gave her after wrapping this month’s date movie The Dilemma. “I don’t use the Internet, but apparently you can find out everything on it,” she says sounding genuinely bewildered. “I have my e-mail on my BlackBerry, and that’s about it. I’ve never read a blog, ever. I feel like it’s taking away that great anticipation of seeing a movie. It used to be you’d hear, like, Al Pacino was making a movie, and you wouldn’t know anything about it. And nowadays, you know it all, like how much [the actors] are being paid. I would hate to see a picture of me and the caption reads, ‘Is she worth it?’ ”

The truth is, audiences haven’t had to ask that question about Ryder for some time now. In the past couple of years, Winona Ryder The Star has all but vanished, save a few hip turns in rarefied films, such as 2009’s The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, and an all-too-brief appearance as Spock’s mom in J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek. It’s easy to assume that her hiatus may not have been a choice but an informally enforced purgatory for the notorious shoplifting incident at Saks Fifth Avenue in 2001 and her subsequent trial, in which she was fined $10,000 and ordered to perform 480 hours of community service. But that was nine years ago—a century in Hollywood—and when compared with what young actresses with half the talent get away with these days, her past seems pretty tame. Ryder sees it as a self-inflicted dry spell. “If I don’t relate to the [project], even if it’s something that I should do, it’s hard for me to say yes,” she says. “I’m the type who’d rather not work than work on something I’m not into. I’ve done that a couple of times, and I feel like I can totally see it in my performance.”

Can you say which films?

“No, but it’s kind of obvious.” She laughs. “I mean, there’s a couple of times that I did it, for the, you know, paycheck. Even when I was younger—I remember I did this movie that wasn’t good, called 1969. I totally did it ’cause I could get out of school. I can see it in even great actors’ performances, when they’re phoning it in.” Even if there’s a paucity of quality material out there, Ryder is candid about what it feels like to age as an actress. “I did relate to Beth on a certain level,” she says. “Just that thing of, you know, when I’m told I’m not the ingenue anymore. And now I’m 39. I remember when I was younger, I couldn’t wait to be older, because I was always the kid on the set, I was always younger than everyone else. And now I’m older than a lot of the people I work with. I’ve been doing this for 25 years, which is so strange. I was watching TV, and there was this oldies-but-goodies film fest, and Lucas came on. I was like, Oh my God, I’m an oldie!”

Then again, it seems age and experience have bestowed some blessings on Ryder. These days, she seems more willing to explore new territory and isn’t afraid to hustle for something she wants. This month, Ryder plays Kevin James’ cheating wife, who’s caught in the act by her husband’s best bro Vince Vaughn, in the Ron Howard comedy The Dilemma. “She definitely chased it,” Howard says. “She was really willing to come in and read with Vince, to see what it all felt like. And it was great when somebody of her stature volunteers that sort of thing. We pretty much cast her on the spot.”

It’s nearing cliché to say Ryder is poised for a comeback. She may well be, but talking to her, you definitely don’t get the feeling she’s meticulously plotting it. In fact, she seems more interested in other facets of her life, like meeting a nice guy, something that’s not easy when you’ve been the lust object of shaggy-haired, misunderstood men since you were 15. “I remember being at this bar called Tosca in San Francisco, and I met this guy one night. He was really cute, and we were talking, and then, like, he just said something about how he had always had a crush on me. And I was suddenly mistrustful about why he was talking to me. I wanted to be just a normal girl flirting with a normal guy. It’s like you meet people, and they know this stuff about you. It’s why you want to meet somebody who’s in the same business, only because they understand more. But you don’t necessarily want to be with another actor.”

Ryder says she’s not seeing anyone seriously now but has thought about what course her career might take when she, “knock on wood,” has kids. “I would at least take a couple of years off.” Just don’t expect her to disappear altogether. “I remember when I was about 18,” she says, pausing for a moment. “Sean Penn made a bet with me. He had just directed his first movie, and he’s like, ‘By the time you’re 30, I will bet you $500 that you’ll be sick of acting.’ I’m still waiting to collect, because I’m not.”

By Candice Rainey for Elle US

My Fox Orlando – Winona Ryder is back on the red carpet after a lengthy absence from Hollywood.

Ryder, 38, attended the Toronto Film Festival premiere of the ballet psychodrama “Black Swan” in which she made a cameo. She posed for photos with co-star Natalie Portman wearing a low-cut black dress with a below-the-knee skirt, according to Yahoo! Movies .

There was also talk of her new tattoo on her left forearm, which fans are saying is a combination of the Indonesian symbol for “compassion” and the Tibetan symbol for “enlightenment.”

Her iconic presence in the 90’s and early millennium in movies like “Edward Scissorhands”, “Reality Bites” and “Little Women” had all been halted when she was charged with shoplifting in 2001 by Saks Fifth Avenue where she was caught on camera stealing $5,500 worth of designer items. She was arrested and put on three years probation.

Now at 38 at 5’4” frame Winona Ryder was one of Hollywood’s original waif but she isn’t as waify looking anymore as she catches the world’s attention once again as an ageing ballerina who can’t perform in a New York City Production of Swan Lake and was taken over by Natalie Portman in “Black Swan”.

Recently seen in the Toronto Film Festival premiere of the psychodrama she showed her womanly curves in a black dress with a demure below-the-knee skirt and bustier-style neckline. A tattoo (meaning compassion and enlightenment in both its Indonesian and Tibetan meanings) on her left forearm didn’t go noticed.

Her iconic presence in the 90’s and early millennium in movies like “Edward Scissorhands”, “Reality Bites” and “Little Women” had all been halted when she was charged with shoplifting in 2001 by Saks Fifth Avenue where she was caught on camera stealing $5,500 worth of designer items. She was arrested and put on three years probation.

She, however, made acting appearances in some films in 2006 and even played Spok’s mother in Star Trek last year.

Next year, she has a major leading role in the Ron-Howard comedy “The Dilemma” with Vince Vaughn and Kevin James.

Source: The News Chronicle

The Lost Boy: This morning in the Hyatt Regency, I saw Winona Ryder in the flesh for the very first time. I wish I could say we met at some sort of party and hit it off and decided to blow off the party and drink wine at her hotel room while discussing love, life and the pursuit of happiness. But sadly, I had to settle for the “Black Swan” press conference, where I eagerly sat in the front row and just stared longingly at her nervous eyes.

She seemed really anxious being up there, and stuttered through the answers to some her questions. It made me just wanted to put up my hand and tell her that everything was going to be okay. And, well, that my childhood room was adorned with hundreds of her photographs. And that I could mouth the words to every line of dialogue she has in “Heathers,” “Reality Bites,” “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Great Balls of Fire.” And that she’d been this strange presence in my life… like this imaginary beacon of boyish femininity that guided me through the first 14 years of my life. I’d even like to tell her I used to fantasize she was my older sister and demanded we named my actual sister after her when I was 8 years old (which thankfully didn’t happen).

But then I realized that would not only would that make her more anxious, I would probably also be kicked out of the conference for sounding so insane.

Anyway, here’s a video from when Ryder and co-star Natalie Portman had been asked about the pressures they felt by being in the public eye since they were children, a pressure that is eerily mirrored in “Swan.” Free Winona: