Winona: Back in the Spotlight!

Wednesday, Jul 25, 2007

The ’90s pin-up girl hits the red carpet in NYC Monday night as she jumpstarts her career with a bunch of new movies!

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