WINONA Ryder
When Netflix’s Stranger Things debuted in 2016, critics raved about the nostalgia-laden, Spielberg-esque offering, while audiences became obsessed. At the very centre of the feverish attention was Winona Ryder’s portrayal of a woman whose life had spun out of control. Still, it was hard to miss the symmetry between the plot and her own life.
She was the gamine It girl whose insouciant cool came to define a generation, then turned troubled star, years before Lindsay Lohan and co made the courtroom arrival a tabloid mainstay. Now, thanks to Stranger Things, Ryder was making a stunning comeback after years of living in self-appointed exile.
Born Winona Horowitz, near Winona, Minnesota, her writer parents struggled to make ends meet. When she was 10, the family moved to California, and shortly after Ryder enrolled at the American Conservatory Theater. A tomboyish teenager, Ryder dropped out of high school at age 14 after being attacked by a group of school kids who thought she was an effeminate boy. “I
