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From Beetlejuice and Heathers to Edward Scissorhands, Winona Ryder was the ultimate female star of the late 1980s and early 1990s, hailed as a generation-defining actress. She has dated Johnny Depp and Matt Damon. She has accomplished that rare feat of unifying men and women in admiration. But her life has not always been easy. It has been turbulent, it has been public, it has been bittersweet. She is now 37, although forever childlike in the collective consciousness, and she is still a subject of fascination. Read on for the highlights of ELLE’s exclusive interview, written by the director and novelist behind her new film, Rebecca Miller.

She was the most alluring actress from her generation, then she disappeared. Winona Ryder talks to Sally Singer about family, fraught times, and being just fine with turning 35. Photographed by Craigh McDean.

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Winona Ryder has long been friends with Henry Alex Rubin, the co-director of the hit documentary Murderball, and counts herself a huge fan of Rubin’s hard-hitting new film. Here, Winona Ryder talks to Zupan, along with Murderball’s co-directors, Dana Adam Shapiro and Henry Alex Rubin, about the film, which hits theaters this month.

A few years back there seemed no doubt that Winona Ryder would go on to establish herself as the actress of her generation. Having notched up two Oscar nominations by the time she was 24, as well as being anointed honorary queen of the slacker generation, she had a head start on everyone else. But with the failure of her last three films, to say nothing of the rise of Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, the golden girl of the early 1990s is in danger of looking like yesterday’s icon.

Un día de la producción de “Inocencia Interrumpida”, el film de las memorias de Susana Kaisen, Winona mandó al director James Mangold: “Ella había estado en pie toda la noche y me dio una pequeña nota que decía “No me dejes por mis típicos ojos marrones”. Cuando nos encontramos en la suite en “The Four Seasons”, en Beverly Hills, sus ojos fueron la primera cosa en la que me fije. No sólo ellos dominaban su rostro – profundo, ruedas marrones sobre perfectos horizontes incluso sin cámaras, ellos tenían la misma intensidad que necesitaba para la película.

Winona Ryder is all grown up – she has a new house (with gardeners) and Arthuer Miller’s phone number and is even prepared to discuss her childhood traumas with Jonathan Van Meter.

SOMETIMES A GIRL just needs to find the right guy. And Lord knows, Winona Ryder had been looking. For four years, the woman who always seems to snare America’s favorite man had been coming up empty. A lunch here, a conference call there, a meeting in between, and no one – not one single person – really got what she was after.

In ‘Girl, Interrupted,’ Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie commit themselves to a different kind of chick flick – the true story of a young woman’s coming-of-age in a mental hospital.

She was suppose to be dead, this young actress hanging – wrists slashed, eyes open – in a bathroom in Pennsylvania. Though she’d been harnessed in that uncomfortable position for some time, she had a bigger problem: Winona Ryder, acting opposite her in this scene, was too convincing. Every time Ryder came into the bathroom and discovered, to her horror, her beloved friend hanging, the dead girl couldn’t help but cry.

Winona Ryder finds her richest role to date as the tortured, troubled heroine of Girl, Interrupted–a character, reports Jonathan Van Meter, that she understands all too well. Photographed by Steven Meisel.

It’s another soggy, post-apocalyptic afternoon on the set of Alien Resurrection, and Sigourney weaver is slipping Winona Ryder a little tongue. Actually, it’s a huge tongue. “Actually,” says Ryder, “it’s a disgusting, slimy, uchhh…”