Winona Ryder's Tragic True-Life Story

It was clear from Winona Ryder's breakout role in Tim Burton's 1988 hit "Beetlejuice" that she was never going to be your typical Hollywood actress. As the "strange and unusual" Lydia Deetz, who battles depression and loneliness while learning about her ability to see the dead, Ryder established herself in the industry as one who could handle darker, more challenging roles than the average teen star.

This held true throughout her career, with Ryder taking on numerous other troubled characters. These include Kim, who falls for a freakish yet kindhearted creature in "Edward Scissorhands," Susanna, a teen who gets sent to a mental institution in the drama "Girl, Interrupted," which is taking over Netflix, and Joyce Byers, a single mom who must save her son Will (Noah Schnapp) from The Upside Down in "Stranger Things."

However, as Ryder established herself on screen as an icon amongst the misfits and nonconformists, she experienced behind-the-scenes many of the same struggles endured by her fictional personas. From mental health battles and sexual harassment to relationship woes and a public run-in with the law, Ryder's life has been anything but easy.

Even before becoming a household name, Winona Ryder marched to the beat of her own drum. In middle school, when it came to her style, a pre-teen Ryder didn't follow any trends. Rather, she donned clothes from the men's section and an extremely short, boyish haircut. Unfortunately, this made her a prime target for bullies, with the actor reflecting on her traumatizing adolescent years in Nigel Goodall's book "Winona Ryder: The Biography."

"I was wearing an old Salvation Army shop boy's suit," she recalled in the book of her third day as a seventh-grader at Kenilworth Junior High, located in Petaluma, California (via People). "As I went to the bathroom, I heard people saying, 'Hey f***** [a homophobic slur].' They slammed my head into a locker. I fell to the ground and they started to kick the s*** out of me. I had to have stitches." Even as Ryder entered her teen years and became a breakout star in "Beetlejuice," the bullying didn't let up. Rather than having homophobic slurs hurled at her, she was accused of being a witch after taking on the role of Lydia.

Though there were no repercussions for the kids who tormented Ryder, she received some semblance of justice years later when one of her old bullies cornered her in a coffee shop asking for an autograph. "I said, 'Do you remember me? Remember in seventh grade you beat up that kid?,'" Ryder said in the biography. "And she said, 'Kind of.' And I said, 'That was me. Go f*** yourself.'"

From childhood, Winona Ryder battled anxiety, depression and loneliness, which only became exacerbated upon entering the world of Hollywood. In fact, in the early '90s, she voluntarily sought out help at a mental hospital for the debilitating anxiety attacks that she was suffering. However, her hospital stint wasn't a cure-all, with Ryder's role of Susanna in 1999's "Girl, Interrupted" bringing back unwanted feelings. 

She told Entertainment Weekly, "I was terrified to play a character who was full of fear and anxiety knowing that I have been full of fear and anxiety, and it's not something that's just past tense for me. It's something you battle with your whole life." Ryder added that, in order to make Susanna's anxiety attacks appear real on camera, she essentially had to send herself into one. "I didn't know how to put a lid on that when they said 'cut,'" she said. "My heart would still be going a million miles an hour, and I would be sweating and I would feel like I felt when I was 19..."

Given her fame and growing fortune, Ryder felt guilty for feeling the way she did. Though her Rolling Stone cover deemed her something to the effect of "the luckiest girl in the world," she was in pain. Ryder said in a 1999 interview with Diane Sawyer, "I'm as nauseated as the next person when actors complain about their lives. We are blessed. We are lucky. But the stuff that I was going through was difficult."

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Outside of school, Winona Ryder still wasn't immune to having nasty things said about her appearance. As a teenager, when she was beginning to audition for various projects, she was often told that she didn't have the looks to make it in the industry, and was urged by the powers that be to cast her dreams aside.

"I remember one time in particular. I was in the middle of auditioning, and I was mid-sentence when the casting director said, 'Listen, kid. You should not be an actress. You are not pretty enough. You should go back to wherever you came from and you should go to school. You don't have it,'" she recalled to Interview Magazine in 2013. "She was very blunt — I honestly think that she thought she was doing me a favor."

Ryder wasn't ignorant to the fact that she didn't look like your typical Hollywood star. But not once did she allow such bluntness to dampen her spirit or feel inclined to change who she was in order to secure work, a trait instilled in her by her parents. Instead, Ryder made her uniqueness work for her, portraying characters like Lydia in "Beetlejuice" and Rina in "Lucas" (are you either of these Ryder movies based on your zodiac sign?) that weren't written to be conventionally attractive. "So I scored in the sense that if I hadn't done those, I don't know that I would've been cast in other things, because I wasn't really considered a beauty."

In December 2001, the usually-private actress was tossed into the spotlight after she was arrested at the Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills for grand theft. After detaching security tags from clothes and other items worth approximately $5,500, the then-30-year-old Winona Ryder attempted to make off with the merchandise. 

Ryder was released on $20,000 bail. Though she didn't have to complete any jail time, she had to pay fines and was sentenced to community service and three years' probation. It was also recommended by the district attorney that she complete drug and psychiatric counseling, given the fact that she had eight drugs, including Endocet containing Oxycodone, on her person at the time of her arrest. She had prescriptions for all except the Endocet, which a physician gave her sans prescription.

It was several years before Ryder spoke publicly about her arrest. "I didn't have this tremendous sense of guilt, because I hadn't hurt anyone," she told Vogue (via People) in 2007. Still, Ryder admitted that the entire ordeal was embarrassing, especially given the difficulties she was experiencing. "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. And then there was this weird point when you don't know if you are in pain but you're taking it," she said, adding that the painkillers caused her to feel confused at times.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Following her public shoplifting scandal, Winona Ryder made the conscious decision to take a step back from her acting career and spend some time near her parents in San Francisco. She explained in an interview with Esquire that she felt "checked out" and, deep down, wanted something to pull her away from Hollywood.

"Psychologically, I must have been at a place where I just wanted to stop," she told Porter magazine (via People). "I won't get into what happened, but it wasn't what people think. And it wasn't like the crime of the century! But it allowed me time that I really needed, where I went back to San Francisco and got back into things that ... I just had other interests, frankly."

For five years, Ryder remained under the radar, appearing in only a handful of projects during her semi-hiatus from the industry. Luckily, her always-supportive parents didn't push her to return to her craft, nor did they reprimand her for the Saks Fifth Avenue incident. "No one ever got angry with me," she told Vogue. "Concerned, yes, but not concerned with a drug problem or anything." Ryder explained that, after her arrest, she no longer looked to painkillers.

When Winona Ryder stepped away from Hollywood, no one was exactly banging down her door with offers for her to return. She told Harper's Bazaar in 2022, "I think it was a very mutual break." Still, even when she was ready to work again in her late 30s, finding meaningful work proved difficult. It was the era of raunchy comedies, which Ryder wanted no parts of. She told Esquire, "Actresses were being punished for not getting the joke, or not playing along. Everyone was trying to be the cool girl, sexualized but also one of the guys... I thought it was demeaning. I just remember feeling like, 'Man, if this is the future, we're f*****.'"

Though she secured some attractive parts, including a cameo in 2010's "Black Swan," Ryder felt that she was capable of taking on more than what's typically available to actresses approaching middle age. "We want to play complicated characters," she told Esquire. "Nuanced. We don't necessarily want to play strong. We want something to work with!"

The perfect opportunity came along when she was approached by Matt and Ross Duffer to portray Joyce in "Stranger Things." Though the brothers were nervous as to whether or not Ryder would agree to the project, she was on board. Joyce has the nuance that Ryder sought, from the pain and vulnerability shown while trying to figure out what happened to her son to the strength exuded while taking on the bad guys alongside Jim Hopper (David Harbour, with whom she has a loving and complicated off-screen relationship).

Despite being one to usually shy away from the public eye, Winona Ryder was at the center of attention when, at the age of 18, she began dating her "Edward Scissorhands" co-star Johnny Depp, who was 26 at the time. The two fell hard and fast for each other, soon becoming engaged. Depp even got a tattoo on his arm bearing the words "Winona forever."

However, in 1993, after four years together, they went their separate ways, much to the heartbreak of Ryder, who described Depp as her "first everything." She told Cinema.com, "I was very depressed after breaking off my engagement with Johnny." According to Depp, the high-profile nature of their relationship and the press' prying eyes were major factors in their split. "It's very hard to have a personal life in this town," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1993. "My relationship with Winona, it was my mistake to be as open as we were, but I thought if we were honest, it would destroy that curiosity monster. Instead, it fed it, gave people license to feel they were part of it."

This marked Ryder's first true heartbreak. Though the breakup and news surrounding it took a toll on her mental health, she maintained a friendship with Depp over the years. Even during his defamation trial against Amber Heard, which was turned into a Netflix documentary, Ryder stood by him, explaining how she always knew him as a good person.

Winona Ryder, born Winona Laura Horowitz, may not be a religious person, but she does identify with and feel proud of her family's Jewish heritage. Therefore, if an antisemitic comment is made toward her or another Jewish person, she's naturally going to take offense. Throughout her life, Ryder has endured everything from backhanded compliments (she said in an interview with The Sunday Times that she was once told, "Wait, you're Jewish? But you're so pretty!") to, allegedly, flat out slurs.

She said, "We were at a crowded party [around 1996] with one of my good friends and Mel Gibson was smoking a cigar, and we're all talking and he said to my friend, who's gay, 'Oh wait, am I gonna get Aids?' And then something came up about Jews and he said, 'You're not an oven dodger, are you?'" As someone who had family members die in Nazi camps, Ryder was not amused.

Gibson's representative told Variety that Ryder made the story up. However, if true, this wasn't his first antisemitic comment. In 2006, police reported that, while getting arrested for a DUI, the actor and filmmaker said, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world!" He later claimed that he only said this because he was angry and under the influence, and, allegedly, being recorded illegally by the officer. In response, Ryder said to Variety, "I believe in redemption and forgiveness and hope that Mr. Gibson has found a healthy way to deal with his demons, but I am not one of them."

The bulk of Winona Ryder's career took place prior to the #MeToo movement, before there was wide support for victims of sexual violence and harassment to speak up. Several incidents happened to Ryder in her late 20s and 30s, which she touched on in her 2024 interview with Esquire. "I had a couple of different experiences with a couple of people who were just blatantly sexually harassing me," she said. "It wasn't an assault. But it was incredibly inappropriate. It was wild."

Ryder went on to say that she understands what the victims of Harvey Weinstein, who was accused by numerous women of sex crimes, went through. Though not a victim of Weinstein, she endured several concerning encounters with the film producer, which, she believes, is why his company Miramax blacklisted her. According to Ryder, Weinstein took offense when she initiated a handshake (she thinks he was expecting something more) and suggested he hire another actress for "Little Voice," in which he wanted her to star. "I think I knew a little bit too much," she said. "He did not like me."

While filming "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice," which blew everyone away at the box office, Ryder shared these experiences with her young co-star Jenna Ortega, warning her about how creepy Hollywood can be: "And as I was saying it, I was like, 'Jesus Christ, that's really f***** up.'"

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

In 1992, two years after turning down Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather III" to focus on her mental health, Winona Ryder had the opportunity to work with the filmmaker. In his directorial project "Bram Stoker's Dracula," she portrays Mina Murray, who is seduced by Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) despite her impending nuptials to lawyer Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves).

For one scene in particular, Ryder had to look distraught, with Oldman's Dracula moments away from transforming into a horde of rats. Ryder revealed in an interview with The Sunday Times that, in order to make the intensity of the scene appear real on camera, Coppola allegedly shouted insults at her and encouraged her castmates to do so as well. "Literally, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu ... Francis was trying to get all of them to yell things that would make me cry," she said.

This technique didn't result in any tears falling from Ryder's eyes. However, it did launch the beginning of a longtime friendship with Reeves, who refused to participate. Ryder and Reeves reunited for 2018's "Destination Wedding" and refer to each other as "husband" and "wife," a nod to the wedding scene they filmed for "Dracula."

After her emotional split from Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder's love life continued to be a rollercoaster. Over the years, the actress has been briefly linked to a number of recognizable men, from "The X Files" star David Duchovny to Helmet guitarist Page Hamilton. Her longest public relationship in the decade that followed Depp was with Matt Damon, whom she dated from 1997 through 2000.

Ryder may have a lengthy list of exes, but, according to her, she gives 100 percent of her focus to whichever guy she's dating at the time, even if that same courtesy isn't always returned to her. "I was dating the type of person who only lets you know a few weeks in that they're in a relationship with someone else. And you're just like, 'What the f***?,'" she explained to Harper's Bazaar.

Following a series of short relationships, Ryder found a long-term commitment with Scott Mackinlay Hahn, co-founder of sustainable fashion brand Loomstate. The pair was first linked in 2011 and, at the time of this writing, are still going strong more than a decade later, with neither rushing toward an engagement, marriage or a family.