When Winona Ryder broke her arm shooting ‘Mr Deeds’: “I was showing off like an idiot”
From Gothic teen queen to much-maligned tabloid fodder to respected dramatic performer, the career of Winona Ryder has been more upside down than that place her son got stuck in during the first season of Stranger Things. From cult movies like Heathers and Beetlejuice to major releases like Alien: Resurrection and Little Women, Ryder’s repertoire is stacked, but she hasn’t always had such great luck.
Following her controversial arrest for shoplifting in 2001, Ryder was turned into something of a pariah. Her film roles reflect this change in status, as she began appearing in absolute dreck like 2002’s Mr Deeds. A remake of the classic Frank Capra comedy Mr Deeds Goes to Town, Ryder plays Babe Bennett (a horrible name for a character), a reporter working on a story about an ordinary man who unexpectedly inherits a large fortune from an obscure relative. This title role, originally played by Gary Cooper, was reprised by Adam Sandler in the more modern version.
Mr Deeds is an absolute disaster, unfunny, uninteresting, and full of the worst parts of Sandler’s schtick. It made a killing at the box office, but every single person who bought a ticket would have felt cheated out of their money. Audiences might have been in pain watching it, but at least they didn’t suffer any physical harm as a result, unlike one of its stars.
“I never broke a bone until the movie, until I did Deeds,” Ryder told W magazine. “I broke my arm. We were shooting a scene where Adam and I are riding bikes down a long flight of stairs in Central Park. I was in heels, and my heel got caught in the pedal. The funniest thing is we were just standing there, but I was totally showing off like an idiot. Suddenly, I was on the ground, and he was like, ‘Are you okay?’ I got up, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I‘m fine. No problem!’ And in the morning, oh, God, my arm hurts.”
This bizarre accident ended up having unintended consequences on the actor’s shoplifting trial. On the day of her preliminary hearing, Ryder was caught in a media scrum. A camera caught her on the elbow of the arm she had broken, which re-aggravated her old injury. While she tried to soldier on, the judge ended up abandoning the hearing upon realising she was in pain.
When W asked how she finished the movie after breaking a bone, Ryder gave a very simple answer. “I’m an actress,” she said. “I’m trained to hide my pain. But eventually, I went to the doctor, and it was broken in three places! Miraculously, they were joint breaks, so you don’t put those in a cast.” She had almost died on the set of Alien: Resurrection, too, so a broken arm probably didn’t even phase her.
After years of career freefall with movies like Mr Deeds, Ryder eventually turned things around and enjoyed a well-deserved comeback. It’s just a shame that her CV contains stinkers such as this one, though, movies that weren’t worth breaking a nail over, let alone her entire arm.
