How Winona Ryder’s favourite movie almost derailed her career: “They were deeply offended”
It’s often the case that a movie is released, only for swathes of audiences to misunderstand the message at the core of the narrative. Perhaps the use of satire goes over people’s heads, or irony is misconstrued – but that’s the risk you have to take when you put art out into the world.
Winona Ryder has certainly experienced this, like when one of her breakthrough roles threatened to derail her career. In fact, she actually missed out on a role because of one she’d already done, but she had to just take it in her stride, because if there’s one thing you should be as an actor, it’s authentic. She was proud of the film she’d made – too bad that the producers of another project couldn’t see its brilliance.
Of course, I’m talking about Heathers. The movie was a big moment for Ryder, helping to establish her as a leading teen star with a propensity for slightly unusual roles. She played Veronica, the odd-one-out member of the Heathers clique at a well-to-do high school, where the popular girls play croquet in their mini-skirt and jacket combos, looking down on damn-near anyone who isn’t lucky enough to be in their clan.
Veronica wants out, but when she meets the mysterious, rebellious JD, a new student, her acts of revenge and hierarchy dismantling take a rather violent turn, with tragic consequences. The whole movie is rooted in satire, and some of it was seen as ‘too far’, at least for slightly more conservative viewers. I mean, it’s understandable that many people were shocked by it – the whole film is about staging the murders of high-schoolers as suicides, and in one instance, the victims are two jocks made to look like lovers who have killed themselves in a double suicide. It’s ridiculous, but the satire really works – unless you’re somehow unable to pick up on it, that is.
Written by Daniel Waters, his use of satire clearly went over the heads of the creators of The Freshman, the Andrew Bergman film that starred Hollywood legend Marlon Brando. Ryder landed herself a role in the film, and she was delighted to get the chance to star alongside someone as iconic as Brando, but soon Heathers would come to bite her up the behind. It was the reason she was dropped from the film.
She told Elle, “I was told I was never gonna work again if I did Heathers. I did lose a job. OK, OK, I’ll tell you. You remember the movie The Freshman? They thought it was making fun of teen suicide. They were deeply offended and, yeah, they revoked the offer. I’m like, ‘I can’t work with Marlon Brando?’ But I had to stand my ground. I wasn’t gonna apologise.”
She might have lost out on the role, but Ryder’s career was hardly affected, and she went on to star in some classics in the coming years, spanning Edward Scissorhands to The Age of Innocence. Ryder still holds Heathers as one of her most favourite movies she has ever starred in, and she doesn’t regret it one bit.
“I looove this movie—to the point where I talk about it like I’m not even in it,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “If it’s on TV, I watch it. I’ve probably seen it 50 times. Like, I can do it by heart.”
