Vintage postcard.
British postcard by TV Hits. Photo: Firooz Zahedi / Onyx.
Belgian postcard by MultiChoice Kaleidoscope. Photo: Isopress / Outline (Low).
Killing popular schoolgirls
Winona Ryder was born Winona Laura Horowitz in Winona (Olmsted County), Minnesota, in 1971. Yes, her name is very much the same as her birthplace. Her parents, Cindy Horowitz (Istas), an author and video producer, and Michael Horowitz, a publisher and bookseller, were part of the hippie movement. Her brother Uri Horowitz (1976) got his first name from Yuri Gagarin. She also has a half-sister, Sunyata Palmer (1968), and a half-brother, Jubal Palmer (1970), from her mother Cindy's first marriage.
From 1978, Winona grew up in a commune near Mendocino in California, without electricity. When Winona was seven, her mother managed an old cinema in a nearby barn and screened films all day. She allowed Winona to miss school to watch movies with her. In 1981, the family moved to Petaluma, California. Winona was an outsider. Her parents sent her to a public school and later to the American Conservatory Theatre acting school in San Francisco.
At 13, a talent scout discovered her at a performance at the American Conservatory Theatre. In 1985, she auditioned for a role in the film Desert Bloom (David Seltzer, 1986) with a video in which she performed a monologue from 'Franny and Zooey' by J. D. Salinger. Although fellow actress Annabeth Gish was cast, director and writer David Seltzer recognised her talent. He later cast her as Rina in his film Lucas (David Seltzer, 1986) about a teenager (Corey Haim) and his high school life. When telephoned how she wanted to be credited, she heard her father's album by Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels playing in the background and chose Ryder as her stage name. Her hair's real colour is blonde, but was dyed black for Lucas (1986). She was told to keep it that colour. Except for Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990), it has stayed that colour since.
Her next film was Square Dance (Daniel Petrie, 1987), in which her character lives between two worlds: on a traditional farm and in a big city. Ryder's performance received good reviews, although neither film was a commercial success. Lucas led director Tim Burton to cast her in his film Beetlejuice (1988). In this comedy, she played Lydia Deetz, who moves with her family into a house inhabited by ghosts (Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, and Michael Keaton). Ryder and the film received positive reviews, and Beetlejuice was a box office hit.
In 1989, she starred as Veronica Sawyer in the independent film Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1989) about a couple (Ryder and Christian Slater) who kill popular schoolgirls. Ryder's agent had advised her against the role. The film was a financial failure, but Ryder received positive reviews. The Jerry Lee Lewis biopic Great Balls of Fire! (Jim McBride, 1989) was also a flop. That same year, Ryder appeared in Mojo Nixon's music video 'Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child'. At the premiere of Great Balls of Fire (1989), Ryder met Johnny Depp. They became engaged a few months later, but their relationship ended in 1993. He had a tattoo of her name, and after they broke up, he reduced it to "Wino forever".
Canadian postcard by Canadian Postcard, no. A 272. Photo: Winona Ryder in Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1989).
Canadian postcard by Canadian Postcard, no. A 298.
British postcard by Film Review, set L, card 3. Photo: Entertainment Film Distributors. Winona Ryder in The House of the Spirits (Bille August, 1993), adapted from the novel by Isabel Allende.
A voicemail from Martin Scorsese
In 1990, Winona Ryder broke through alongside her boyfriend Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990). The fantasy film was an international box-office success. Ryder was selected as Mary Corleone in The Godfather: Part III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990) but had to drop out after catching the flu from the strain of doing Welcome Home, Roxy (Jim Abrahams, 1990) and Mermaids (Richard Benjamin, 1990) back-to-back. In a later interview, she said she arrived in Rome to film and simply could not get out of bed. A doctor was called and ordered her to return home and sleep.
Critics praised Ryder's performance alongside Cher and Christina Ricci in the family comedy Mermaids (1990). She was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actress. Ryder also appeared with Cher and Ricci in the music video for 'The Shoop Shoop Song', the film's theme song. Independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch wrote a role specifically for her in Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch, 1991), as a tattooed, chain-smoking cab driver who dreams of becoming a mechanic.
Ryder played a dual role as Mina Murray and Elisabeta in Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992). In 1993, she starred as Blanca in the drama The House of the Spirits (Bille August, 1993) alongside Antonio Banderas, Meryl Streep, and Glenn Close. It is the film adaptation of Isabel Allende's bestseller of the same name. She co-starred with Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis in Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993), the film adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel. Ryder was Martin Scorsese's first and only choice for the role of May Welland. For years, she kept Scorsese's voicemail message in which he told her that she got the role. Her part earned her the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and an Oscar nomination.
Winona Ryder also earned positive reviews for her role in the comedy Reality Bites (Ben Stiller, 1994). That same year, she received more critical acclaim and another Oscar nomination as Jo in the drama Little Women (Gillian Armstrong, 1994). In 1996, she starred alongside Daniel Day-Lewis and Joan Allen in The Crucible (Nicholas Hytner, 1996), an adaptation of Arthur Miller's stage play about the Puritan witch hunt in Salem. The film was not a success, but Ryder's performance was acclaimed. A year later, she portrayed an android in the successful Horror film Alien: Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997) alongside Sigourney Weaver's Ripley.
She starred in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998) after Drew Barrymore turned down the role, and as a psychiatric patient with borderline syndrome in the drama Girl, Interrupted (James Mangold, 1999), based on Susanna Kaysen's autobiographical novel. Girl, Interrupted was her first film as executive producer and was to be Ryder's comeback in Hollywood after some flops. However, the film became Angelina Jolie's breakthrough, and she won an Oscar for her role. From 1993 to 1996, Ryder was in a relationship with Dave Pirner, the lead singer of the group Soul Asylum, and from December 1997 to April 2000 with Matt Damon.
Vintage postcard, no. 1030.
Vintage postcard by iauioasinu, no. 0042.
British postcard by Heroes Publishing LTD, London, no. SPC 2856.
British postcard by Pyramid, Leicester, no. PC 8209. Photo: Joyce Silverstein. Caption: Winona Ryder - Cream Dress.
A career setback and a comeback
Winona Ryder appeared alongside Richard Gere in Autumn in New York (Joan Chen, 2000), a romance about an older man's love for a younger woman. She also made a cameo appearance in the comedy Zoolander (Ben Stiller, 2000). The Adam Sandler comedy Mr. Deeds (Steven Brill, 2002) became a huge box-office hit, but failed with critics. Ryder was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award.
Also in 2002, she was sentenced to three years' probation and 480 hours of work for shoplifting $5,000 worth of clothes. The incident caused a career setback. She withdrew from the public eye in the following years and did not return until 2006. In that year, she appeared in the novel adaptation A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, 2006) alongside Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., and Woody Harrelson.
In 2009, she appeared in Star Trek: The Future Begins (J. J. Abrams, 2009) as Amanda Grayson, Spock (Zachary Quinto)'s mother. The prequel was a box-office hit, and Ryder earned a Scream Award for Best Guest Appearance. She also appeared alongside Robin Wright and Julianne Moore in Rebecca Miller's Pippa Lee (2009), and alongside Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010).
Ryder starred in the television film When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story (John Kent Harrison, 2010), for which she was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award. She starred in the comedy The Dilemma (Ron Howard, 2011), and the thrillers The Iceman (Ariel Vromen, 2012) and The Letter (Jay Anania, 2012) opposite James Franco. In Tim Burton's Frankenweenie (2012), she voiced Elsa Van Helsing.
Winona Ryder embodied the main character, Joyce Byers, in the Netflix series Stranger Things (2016-2022). Critics named her role a comeback. She returned opposite Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 2024), the sequel to Beetlejuice (1988). Set more than three decades after the first film, it follows Ryder as Lydia Deetz, now a mother, struggling to keep her family together in the wake of a loss as Beetlejuice returns to haunt her. The film got positive reviews and grossed $452 million worldwide. Since 2011, Ryder has been in a relationship with fashion designer Scott MacKinlay Hahn. She owns some of Hollywood's stars' most priceless memorabilia, including Louis Armstrong's bongo drums. She also has a collection of vintage Hollywood costumes, including Claudette Colbert's gown from It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934).
Vintage postcard in the Movie's Images series, no. 52. Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon, Sigourney Weaver, and Winona Ryder in Alien: Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997).
Vintage postcard in the Movie's Images series, no. 53. Winona Ryder in Alien: Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997).
Vintage postcard in the Movie's Images series, no. 59. Winona Ryder and Sigourney Weaver in Alien: Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997).
British freecard by Boomerang. Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted (James Mangold, 1999). Captions: The crazy thing is, you're not crazy. Girl, Interrupted. Based on a true story. Opens March 24 at Cinemas across the country.
Sources: Pedro Borges (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and German), and IMDb. This post was last updated on 1 October 2026.
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