Winona Ryder was born in Winona, Minnesota on on October 29, 1971. She was named after the city in Minnesota where she was born. Winona's father Michael and mother Cindy Horowitz were hippie intellectuals, and family friends include poet Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary, who was Winona's godfather.
Winona had a very interesting childhood. She lived briefly in Colombia with Chilean revolutionaries before returning to northern California in 1974 with her parents.
When she was 7 years old, Winona's family repaired to an upscale commune located on a 300-acre plot of land in the northern California town of Elk, where they coexisted with seven other families and a bunch of horses. The kids obviously didn't have televisions (after all, they had no electricity in their homes), but Winona's mother operated a movie theatre in an old barn, where she screened the classic films that provided her enthralled daughter with the key to her future. After a year of living in the sticks, the family moved back to the relative civilization of Petaluma, California
Winona's parents encouraged her to enroll in the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Winona graduated from Petaluma High School, with a 4.0 grade point average. Throughout her high school career, Winona's parents tutored her at home whenever necessary to accommodate her acting career.
The golden chance for Winna came in 1985, when she performed a monologue chosen from J.D. Salinger's Franny & Zooey. Deborah Lucchesi, a talent scout, spotted her, and arranged for Winona to take a screen test for the upcoming film "Desert Bloom", starring Jon Voight and Ellen Barkin. Winona did not get this part, but it wasn't long before she was cast in her debut role as Rina in David Seltzer's coming-of-age-film "Lucas". She shot the film during her summer vacation then entered eighth grade in the fall.
As a young actress, Winona had unusual success. With the delicate, ethereal beauty of a consumptive heroine of yore, and an impressive range, Ryder has already proven herself to be one of the most luminous and successful interpreters of the 19th century. Following the positive reception of "Lucas", Winona appeared in the Golden Globe nominated drama "Square Dance". She then did a comic turn as the frustrated daughter of oblivious yuppie parents in Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice". In 1990, Winona appeared in "Mermaids", featuring Cher, and was nominated for a Golden Globe and won a Best Supporting Actress Award from the National Board of Review for her role.
Winona backed out of a role in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather III" due to exhaustion. She checked herself into a mental health facility to be treated for the depression and anxiety that she had been intermittently suffering from for years. Within a week of her hospitalization, she decided that her treatment was not helping and opted to return to her home in San Francisco.
Winona's performance in Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning "The Age of Innocence", was a tremendous success, costarring Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer. She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Winona has been romantically linked to actor Johnny Depp, to whom she was engaged for three years. Depp tattooed "Winona Forever" on his arm, and has since had it partially removed so that it now reads, "Wino Forever". After her heavily publicized breakup with Depp, she dated David Pirner, the lead singer for the rock group Soul Asylum, from 1993 to 1996. She began dating actor Matt Damon in 1998, after the two met at a New Year's Eve party. Most recently, Winona has had a host of well publicized legal problems involving felony accusations, and it will be interesting to see how this affects her future. |
|
|
