In high school, I was an outsider like Dinky Bosetti (Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael) and had the same religion-induced neuroses as Charlotte Flax (Mermaids). I also possessed a Rina-esque sensitivity that attracted guys in a let’s-just-be-friends sort of way (Lucas). For the record, I did not pull a Myra and marry my piano-playin’ cousin (Great Balls of Fire).

From her 1986 debut through the mid-1990s, Winona’s film canon reflected my adolescence. Then, a strange thing happened: Winona stopped making movies that mattered to me. For the first time in more than a decade, I didn’t have a cinematic soulmate.

I’m still searching.

The Pop 5 Things I Miss About Winona Ryder:
5. Her Goth girl look. I still picture Winona as her Beetlejuice character, Lydia Deetz: a black-haired, pale-skinned manic depressive chick whose whole life is “one … big … dark … room.” It seems Madeleine Martin, the 17-year-old actress who plays Becca Moody on Showtime’s Californication, is trying to channel Lydia Deetz, but to no avail. Maybe she should call Otho.

4. Her ability to rock a monocle. I’ve penned my fair share of frantic, late-night diary entries, but I’ve never sported a monocle while doing so. Only Veronica Sawyer (Heathers) and Mr. Peanut could get away with such a bold, ophthalmic fashion statement.

3. Her relationship with Johnny Depp. I’m not the kind of person who cares about celebrity romances, but I admit, I was emotionally invested in the love affair between Winona and Johnny. They were the “Brangelina” of the ’90s, only with fewer kids and more talent. When the pair broke up, Johnny had his “Winona Forever” tattoo modified to say “Wino Forever.” That’s heartbreakingly awesome.

2. Her quirky roles. If I could give Winona one piece of advice, it would be to work with Tim Burton again. The offbeat director of Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands can showcase her talents better than some romantic tear-jerker like Autumn in New York. Shoplifting is the quirkiest thing Ms. Ryder’s done this decade — too bad the only cameras rolling at the time were surveillance cameras.

1. Her believability. Two decades ago, I connected with Winona because she seemed like a real person, not a studio-fabricated starlet. There’s a scene in Mermaids that, as a former dateless wonder, I can totally relate to. Charlotte is walking with her crush (Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles!) to a fishing pond. She stumbles down an embankment, he catches her and — for a split second — she lustfully tongues the sleeve of his jacket. That lick alone should have earned her an Academy Award.

Source: Pop Candy

Winona Ryder
In 2001, Ryder, the poster child of anti-Hollywood starlets and alienated souls everywhere, was charged with shoplifting from Beverly Hills’s Saks Fifth Avenue. In the onslaught of controversy that followed — which included a show trial — Ryder caught Jacobs’s attention. He thought she looked so cute in the black and white dress she wore to court, he hired her for his 2003 Marc Jacobs ad campaign, shot by Juergen Teller.

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My initial disappointment about missing out on the Berlin Film Festival has certainly been helped by the repeated suggestion that almost everything showing there sucks.

But there was one film for which I had placed my selfish travel wants aside and hoped would be great anyway. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee features the first role with any real potential my beloved Winona Ryder had been given in almost a decade (sure, there was A Scanner Darkly, but she was animated and all so it doesnt 100% count, and while The Ten was fun, it certainly wasn’t up to par with my Winonaspectations).

Sundance after Sundance, we’ve watched every single movie she makes crash, burn and fail to get distribution (The Darwin Awards, The Last Word, The Informers), or just seen films shes made fail to get seen by anyone at all (Sex and Death 101, Water Pills), and probably with good reason.

But when I heard of her casting in Pippa, alongside Julianne Moore, Maria Bello and Robin Wright Penn, among others, my heart skipped: “She’s coming back! After basically wasting the entire ‘00s, probably because any decent film wouldn’t risk insuring her crazy ass, someone was taking a chance on her, and she was going to hit it out of the ballpark and return to form!”

Sure, it looked like a small role, maybe even a cameo.. But it was something! And that cast all-but-ensured it might even screen outside a film festival!

When Pippa screened a few days back in Berlin, I immediately heard whispers it was bad, bad, bad. And I got worried. Variety’s Alissa Simon’s said the film features “cardboard characters and severe problems of tone [that] fatally flaw the awkward satirical relationship drama.” But she didn’t single out Winona, which made me think that she can’t be that bad. Then came The Hollywood Reporter’s review, which said the film’s “frenetic, off-putting script ruins what otherwise might have been an entertaining story about a fascinating woman.” However, reviewer Peter Brunette also said “the acting is top-notch.” But he didn’t single out Winona, which made me think that she can’t be that good.

Finally, there was Screen’s much kinder review. I read the review’s first paragraph: “A grown-up love story that’s rambling, quirky and sharp-eyed about mid-life doldrums, Rebecca Miller’s cinematic adaptation of her own novel works largely because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. An across-the-board solid cast backs up Robin Wright Penn’s enjoyable central performance which, like much of the film, is believable without being entirely naturalistic.” Excited, I started to scan for some mention of Ryder. And there, in the reviews final paragraph, was the glisten of hope: “As well as Moore’s tasty cameo there’s a nice turn from Winona Ryder as Pippa’s fragile poet friend Sandra, a needy, pretty wreck with a tendency to burst into tears.” A nice turn! I knew it!

Judge for yourself at seconds 0:05-0:06 of this promo trailer, where Ryder offers us a facial expression that plays like a portal into the deeply conflict mind of her “fragile poet.”

True, this might just be a small step, and one review that seems to go way against everyone else’s current occasionally doesn’t mean the film is actually good . But I take it as a token that Ryder still has something to offer, and that the first decade of this century will soon just be viewed as a little blip on a life history destined for multiple Oscars, mental stability, and being my best friend forever.

Source: The Lost Boy

WINONA Ryder believes actors are nauseating – particularly when they complain about their pampered lives.

“We’re sickeningly well-paid people who have charmed lives. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have problems,” says Ryder, the star of films as diverse as Alien: Resurrection, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands and the upcoming Sex And Death 101 opposite Australian actors Simon Baker and Sophie Monk.

Ryder, 35, has a point. It could even be argued that since she was convicted for shoplifting from a Beverly Hills department store in 2001, the problems have overshadowed the acting.

Anything written about her almost has to start with the offence that earned her 480 hours of community service, even before her achievements can be mentioned (she has had two Oscar nominations: one for Little Women, the other for Age Of Innocence). Without the shoplifting conviction, Winona Ryder would undoubtedly be one of the biggest actresses in the world.

Now, not only is the story the first thing anyone thinks of when her name is mentioned, but she’s so painfully aware of it she finds it hard to put herself out there.

This year, she refused to go to Cannes with Keanu Reeves, her co-star in upcoming film A Scanner Darkly. Reeves thinks she wasn’t ready to have to deal with questions about the incident while even her signature on a petition to pressure the Bush administration into signing the Kyoto Agreement on climate change was refused as she was a convicted felon.

“That was pretty embarrassing,” she says, downplaying the effect it had on her.

Born to alternative parents she dotes on, Ryder was raised on a commune with LSD guru Timothy Leary as her godfather.

With that kind of company and Sex Pistols concerts seen as the perfect entertainment for a seven-year-old, Ryder was never going to be your average girl next door.

By the time she was old enough for high school, her clothes were so weird and androgynous that she was actually beaten up after being mistaken for a gay boy.

Ryder is going through a revival of attention in her career.

She recently graced the cover of US Vogue and her next movie to be released in Australia, Sex And Death 101, will be followed by Ten, in which she will star opposite Naomi Watts’ partner Liev Schreiber.

Sex And Death 101 revolves around a man whose life is turned around by an email, which includes the names of everyone he’s had sex with and ever will have sex with. His situation gets worse when he encounters a femme fatale (Ryder) who targets men guilty of sex crimes.

With the pressure of making probably way too many films while she was in her teens, and the break-up of her relationship with that other Hollywood outsider, Johnny Depp, it is unsurprising that by the age of 19 Ryder was suffering from depression and panic attacks.

“My heart would be going at 90 miles an hour, my breathing would get laboured and I’d be sweating buckets. It was like that feeling when you’re almost in a car crash, and you swerve and for a second there are needles going through your head and all through your body.”

“I was embarrassingly dramatic at the time,” she laughs, with a bit of hindsight, of the end of her relationship with Depp, one she describes as “a fiercely deep love”.

“But you have to remember I was only 19 years old.”

Apart from the bizarre cry for help or whatever the 2001 shoplifting incident was really about, at 35 Ryder seems to have turned into the sort of grown up her parents would be proud of: independent, thoughtful, creative and sensitive.

If the sensitivity is occasionally difficult for her to handle, at least it makes her the sort of actress that goes beyond the sort of hair flicking and short skirts that seem to be the only requirements for success in Hollywood today.

“I’ve learned that its OK to be flawed,” says Ryder now that her career, and her life, seem to be back on course.

“I’ve learned that life can be messy, that some days you glide and some days you fall but most important that there are no secret answers out there.”

WINONA RYDER has been popping up in the public eye more and more lately — the star just hit the premiere of her new flick, ‘The Ten,’ in the Big Apple Monday night.

Winona, who bundled up in a black knit cap and cream-colored coat for the NYC red carpet premiere, is also talking about her past — she says she was embarrassed by the media coverage of her arrest for shoplifting in 2001, after security cameras caught her attempting to pocket merchandise from the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue.

“The attention was what was embarrassing,” she says in Vogue magazine’s August issue.

The story attracted worldwide attention in the news for months due to her subsequent trial, generating a great deal of negative publicity for the successful actress.

“I didn’t have this tremendous sense of guilt, because I hadn’t hurt anyone,” Winona tells Vogue. “Had I physically harmed someone or caused harm to a human being, I think it would have been an entirely different experience.”

Although she’s able to talk about it now, she says of that time: “I never said a word. I didn’t release a statement. I didn’t do anything. I just waited for it to be over.”

She was found guilty and convicted of grand theft, but her troubles began before the incident.

“Two months prior to that, I broke my arm in two places, and the doctor, a sort of quack doctor, was giving me a lot of stuff and I was taking it at first to get through the pain,” she explains. “And then there was this weird point when you don’t know if you are in pain but you’re taking it.”

After the ordeal, she moved to be closer to her family in San Francisco and made “a very conscious decision not to work,” she says.

Her family was supportive. “No one ever got angry with me. Concerned, yes, but not concerned with a drug problem or anything. Because after that night I pretty much didn’t ever.”

Winona has been keeping a low profile, but after a return to the big screen with ‘A Scanner Darkly’ in 2006, the talented star is ready to get back in the spotlight with no less than three movies due out this year: ‘The Ten,’ ‘Sex and Death 101′ and ‘The Last Word.’

Source: ET Movies