WINONA ONLINE News Library

San Francisco International Film Festival, April 20 - May 4, 2000

By Yvonne Walters

Each year the San Francisco International Film Festival bestows the Peter J. Owens Award to honor an actor whose work exemplifies brilliance, independence and integrity. This year Winona Ryder received this prestigious award. Her body of work is most impressive, especially for one who is only twenty eight. She has already created a prodigious number of roles as actor and most recently as producer, (Girl Interrupted). Her filmography lists twenty three films beginning with Lucas in 1986 and ending with two films coming out in 2000…Lost Souls, directed by Janusz Karminski and Autumn in New York with Joan Chen directing. Her latest venture will be the lead in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House shooting in Oslo, Norway in January of 2001 with Sidney Lumet directing. Ms. Ryder commented that this role was written for someone her age but has historically been played by women much older.

Prior to Ms. Ryder stepping on stage to receive the coveted award and become the focus of an on-stage interview, the audience was treated to snippets of 18 of her films beginning with Lucas (1986) and ending with her own production of Girl Interrupted.

Ryder wove an interesting story of how she came to be involved with Girl Interrupted. She read about it in Vanity Fair and through her father, a book dealer and writer, got a hold of a copy before it was distributed and “freaked out” upon reading it. She herself had gone through an “identity crisis, slash, depression” in her twenties and recognized this as one of the first books to deal with what women go through during these formative years. She cited young male characters portrayed in literature including Holden Caulfield and David Copperfield and that “girls are left with “Little Women” and not the gritty stuff”. Ryder wanted to put this out as a “parallel universe they [girls] crawl in and out of.”

One of the things Ms. Ryder is now doing is optioning books suitable to films. The interviewer wondered if this is because she wouldn¹t otherwise be offered good roles? “No, I¹ve been so lucky. I read a lot of good scripts - lots of good scripts do not get financed. I’ve always been this weird actress and get cast younger. I can play different ages, that has been fortunate for me, but I don’t know how long it’s going to last.”

She was lucid about Woody Allen as a director. In Celebrity (1998), she had no idea of who her character was or who anyone else was in the film. “Scenes were handed out a scant 20 minutes before ‘rolling.’ Everything was taken in one shot. It was terrifying as he didn’t like to be bothered and talk a lot except for action, cut & good morning.” When the film was in the can, he wrote her a note…”Dear Winona, Thank you for being in my movie. You didn’t bother me. Love Woody.”

Billy Wilder and William Holden are two artists for whom Ryder has great respect. She feels that Holden was greatly underrated as an actor and was one of Hollywood’s bravest men, taking chances and assuming roles for their merit rather than thier popularity. He often played weak men, overshadowed by the leading lady, (Sunset Boulevard) or the hateful character (Stalag 17).

Some directors with whom Ryder would like to work are Kimberly Pierce, (Boys Don’t Cry) or the Cohen Brothers. Other directors include Erick Zonka, Francis Ford Coppola, Spike Jonze and Pedro Almodovar.

Winona Ryder is a bright woman who not only acts well and selects the odd literary script, but is cognizant of the entire scope of cinema as an art form from the aesthetic to the technical…from the historic to what the future holds. She laments that “young artists don¹t know film history” and is eternally grateful to Martin Scorsese for saving and restoring classic films that would otherwise literally rot. She herself donates heavily to this cause. “Focus should be on the art of film, not on the business of film.”

When asked by an audience member why she posed for the cover of “Cowboys and Indians” she replied that “I love westerns. John Ford is one of the 10 best directors,” and loves Eastswood too. She serves on the Board of American Indian College Funds. We learned that the drop-out rate is largely due to lack of heating in classrooms and scarcity of transportation to and from schools.

Asked if she would consider being on the stage she said that “I don¹t know if I can do it. I was told that my voice is not loud enough.” She studied at San Francisco’s ACT and did a lot of classics. She has an obvious passion for acting thanks to her mother who would often keep her home from school to watch a film. She was especially influenced by films of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s.

Her appearance was followed by the 1993 film, Age of Innocence.

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