EMPIRE
April 2000
Interview : Lara Stuart
Portrait : Mark Seliger
SOUL SURVIVOR Psychological profile :
NOT YET 30, WINONA RYDER'S RICH AND VARIE LIFE HAS INCLUDED TWO VISITS
TO A MENTAL HOSPITAL. ONE AS PATIENT, ONE TO FILM GIRL, INTERRUPED.
NAME : Winona Ryder, née Horovitz
BORN : 29/10/71 ; Winona, Minnesota
HEIGHT : 5'4''
PHYSICAL DISABILITIES : Injured knees, sustained during the filming of
Girl, Interrupted
CASE HISTORY : Aged 19 Winona pulled out of a scheluded
appearance in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part III, claiming
exhaustion. Other sources suggested that problems with her boyfriend,
Johnny depp, were to blame. Subsequently, Winona booked herself into a
psychiatric hospital for a week, after suffering from anxiety attacks,
depression and insomnia. Upon release she spent a year working with a
therapist. Years later, in 1993, Winona bought the rights to Girl, Interrupted,
Susanna Kaysen's memoir about her stay in a mental hospital. She produces
and stars in the film version, believing that it will help people who
think they are insane.
NOTES : Professional actress since the age of 13 Goddaughter
to acid guru Timothy Leary Parents were writers and 60s activists. In
her formative years she lived in a loose " commune " with no electricity
(her house was called " the Mansion "). Previous boyfriends have included
johnny Depp and Soul Asylum's David
Pirner.
Winona ryder has a sensitive soul. She's the kind
of person who shouldn't expose herself to undue pain. Trying to avoid laying
her soul bare. Best she not be reminded of past traumas. In other words,
the last person who should have taken on the task of producing and starring
in Girl, Interrupted. Or, to put it another way, the perfect person…
When she first encountered Susanna Kaysen's fratured and tortured memoir
of teenage depresion and inhuman hospitalisation, Winona experienced a
violent reaction. " It was very similar to my reaction to Catcher In The
Rye, and that's saying a lot, " she laughts. " Susanna captures a mood
that we've all experienced, " she continues, " because we've all faced
these big questions, of whether to choose life or choose to kill ourselves.
You ask yourself, " Why do I feel like I'm going crazy ? Is the world
crazy or am I too sensitive to live in it ? And those are very big questions
for a young girl ."
When Winona was a sensitive young girl, she, her beatnik parents and her
godfather Timothy Leary lived in commune spread over 300 acres of Mendocino
County. " We were no hippies, each family had their own house, " she points
out. There was no television, but her mother ran a, " movie theatre out
of the barn , " and this was when young winona decided to become an actress.
" When I was seven or eight I loved the glamour of it all : Greer Garson
in Random Harvest, Natalie Wood in Splendor In the Grass - I wanted to
be like all those beautiful actresses ."
She didn't have long to wait for those wishes to come true. Auditioning
by reading JD Salinger, Winona made her debut in teen drama Lucas before
landing role in string of hit movies including Beetlejuice, Mermaids,
Edward Scissorhands and Heathers.
Although, the work forced Winona to drop out of school, she refuses to
beleive that high school was something she could ever have " got into
". " I've been told that I've missed out, but I don't really feel like
there's something missing. I was put on a home-study correspondence course
and I did very well academically , I graduated from high school. " However
by the age of 19, the demands of constant work and public scrutnity were
starting to tell."
There was a time when I was 19, when I really, really, really thought
I was going crasy and exhausted and going through adolescence onscreen.
" Things came to a head when Winona found herself caught up in the tragic
kidnapping of a young neighbour, 12 year old Polly Klaas. Winona made
a personal appeal offerinf a reward for information as to the girl's whereabouts.
No-one came forward and the girl was later found dead. She had been sexually
assaulted and them murdered.
It was the final straw. Winona decided it was time to, in her own words,
" Check myself into a home for crazies."
Although her asylum experience did not amount to much - " I would just
walk around "- the whole period was enough to spotlight the importance
of Susanna Kaysen's best-selling book. Although winona left for a year
of therapy after only a few days, Susanna (in real life and in the film)
was not so lucky. " In the 60s, when the movie takes place, they locked
you up for years at a time if you were just a sensitive person. There
was nothing really wrong with Susanna, she was a " borderline personality
", and they called her that because they couldn't diagnose her ."
Sensitive soul that she is, Winona is not even sure if the world " crazy
" has any currency anymore. " I would never presume to call anyone crazy.
I think the world is crazy, this world is insane, and I don't think it's
fair for anybody in it to call anybody else crazy. I think we're all crazy,
everyoneof us has strange impulses ; it's only about how much we can control
ourselves."
These days, Winona is much more in control ; she has to be. After acquiring
the rights to Girl in 1993, she spent seven years bringing her vision
to the screen. Actively involved in all aspects of the casting process
(she handpicked director James Mangold after viewing his debut feature,
Heavy), once Winona got on set, circumstances dictated that she became
very much a hands-off producer. " I never broke character, Istayed in
the framework of Susanna the whole time. Inever left Harrisburg hospital,
where we filmed. I just spent a lot of time sulking around."
The result of all the sulking is the best film Winon has made since Gary
Oldman bit her neck in Dracula. Her co-star, Angelina Jolie, may be stealing
most of the acting plaudits- she has the showier role as the charming
sociopath, Lisa- but there's no doubt this is Winona's triumph, and she
is justifiably proud."
If this movie had come out and I'd seen it when I was young, I would have
been so fucking grateful ; because I would have felt so much less alone
seeing a movie about a girl going through a time in her life like this.
" In her quest for challengin roles, Winona made some risky professional
choices during the 90s, and in the process put a halt to a meteoric rise
which could have seenher challenging Julia Roberts as Hollywood's number
one female star. It is not something winona has any regrets about. " I
hope that this movie will offer some comfort to girls out there, because
girls don't really get alot of movies - speaking as one ; guys get a lot
more movies than girls do, and that's a drag. We insult their intelligence
by offering them a movie like Runaway Bride and thinking it will sate
them. That's not going to cut it, because that's fun and romantic, but
it's a popcorn movie ; girls want over things besides that."
While Winona's professional choices have not always been entirely successful,
her reasoning, at least, seems sound. Unfortunately, the same cannot always
be said for choices in her personal life. However, the string of unsuitable
partners and painful, public breakups,which took in actors Johnny Depp
and Christian Slater and musicians David Pirner and Dave Grohl, at last
seems to have ended with the clean-cut Matt Damon.
The couple were introduced at a party in 1997 by mutual friend Gwyneth
Paltrow, and given the past turmoil, her two-year relationship with Damon
is a subject Winona is reluctant to discuss- beyond declaring that Matt
is, " A very, very,, very, very, very good guy . " However, Winona has
come to realise that ultimately there is only one person on whom she can
rely : " I've learned over the years in my life that it's bad if you rely
on relationships to make you secure. I hate to sound cynical, but I think
you should rely on yourself. All my friends who've relied on their partners
have always gotten screwed."
Say goodbye to the neurotic wallflower, and hello to an empowered female
producer. That damon fella had better behave himself.
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