In 1988, Winona Ryder was just 17 when she landed the role of Lydia Deetz in “Beetlejuice.” She went on to land a string of successful roles, including “Edward Scissorhands” and “The Age of Innocence,” which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
However, in the 2000s, her career took a hit when she was arrested and sentenced to 480 hours of community service following a shoplifting incident in Beverly Hills. At the time, the young actress was under the influence of medication that she was taking without a prescription.
Sexualization that is difficult to manage
Starting her adult life in the spotlight wasn’t easy for Winona Ryder. In an interview with Esquire UK, she revealed that she was the victim of bad behavior: “I had some difficult experiences with a few people who were blatantly sexually harassing me. It wasn’t assault. But it was incredibly inappropriate. It was savage. I really understand what the victims of Harvey Weinstein and others went through,” she says, considering herself lucky to have escaped the worst.
Video. Winona Ryder plans to marry longtime partner this year
“It could have been worse, it didn’t happen to me as much as it did to others,” she says, saying she felt “protected” by her fame as a teenager. But she remembers the discomfort she experienced during some meetings with producers. “I remember that feeling in your mind: you’re negotiating, you’re thinking about what’s going to happen if you say something. You’re working while this person is extremely uncomfortable.”
She has made a habit of calming down inappropriate behavior.
Ryder was aware of the fact that she was attracting unwanted attention early on, and decided to find ways to protect herself from it, including making fun of sexualizing behavior. “If someone was inappropriate with me, or tried to hit on me when I was drunk, I’d be like, ‘Ha ha!'” she recalls. “I could handle it. But the touching? It was very invasive.”
So much so that she preferred to take a break from her career, only to come back many years later, notably thanks to the series “Stranger Things”: “In retrospect, these behaviors spoiled the pleasure I took in making films. All the great actors always told me that when it stops being great, you have to get out of it. I really took that to heart.”
At the time, Winona Ryder’s exclusion was blamed on her legal troubles, but according to the main person concerned, Harvey Weinstein could be behind her exclusion from showbusiness. “At a meeting in 2005 at Miramax, I shook his hand,” she recalls. “When I came out, an agent yelled at me, asking me what I had done. Apparently, I had upset Weinstein. I guess he expected something else,” she emphasizes before adding, sibylline: “He didn’t like me, I think I knew too much.”
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