A biography for Winona Ryderhasn’t been written yet.
“Part of me feels like when you had a lot of success in your teens and 20s, it gets harder for you in your 30s because people are so attached to you as this ingenue. So even though you're older, they still think of you as that girl - that waifish young girl. And so it was sort of like a struggle.”
“I was unusual looking - I didn't have the look of that time. If you look at 'Lucas' - and, basically, my first five or six movies - the characters are not described in the scripts as attractive people.”
“I'm not someone like Norma Desmond who's harking back to her younger days.”
“I can see it in even great actors' performances, when they're phoning it in.”
“I approached work very seriously. I never went out. I couldn't fathom people who could go out to clubs... I mean, if I had a 6 A.M. call, I had to be prepared. I had to be in bed at a certain hour.”
“I am not a person who can really sit around and think about regrets because with every bad experience that you have, there is weirdly something good that comes from it.”
“You've got to grow up sometime.”
“I was watching TV, and there was this oldies-but-goodies film fest, and 'Lucas' came on. I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm an oldie!'”
“I feel like I had to learn how to take care of myself and find out what made me happy aside from just making films.”
“It's also a question of finding good material and interesting roles. I'm not the only actress out there, and good parts just don't fall into your lap that easily. But I like most of the films I've made recently and so I'm pretty positive about the future.”
“I love photography and first editions. I have that in my genes. My father was an archivist.”
“I don't hang out with agents and producers and I'm not into the business side at all.”
“It's just people should realize that the celebrity aspect of being an actor is very rarely enjoyable for people like me who would always rather go unnoticed and disappear into the crowd.”
“What's awful about being famous and being an actress is when people come up to you and touch you. That's scary, and they just seem to think it's okay to do it, like you're public property.”
“I love watching old movies, and I read a lot of autobiographies.”
“There was a time when I was 19 when I really, really, really thought I was going crazy. I was exhausted and going through a terrible depression.”
“When I was young, I was the sweetheart of the press. They loved me but were kind of waiting for me to mess up. I had no skeletons in my closet, no major past to talk about.”
“Scorsese would talk to me about this movie 'The Heiress' with Olivia de Havilland. We were talking about this scene in it, and suddenly we were rolling. It was very intentional, and I didn't realize - because we talk old movies all the time.”
“But I've always felt a need to have a life which is completely separate - at least as far as possible - from the kind of illusory lifestyle that comes with being a celebrity.”
“Some people go to L.A. just to see recognizable people. There are tour buses. But in New York, everyone seems a little less into that.”