Winona Ryder names her favourite Winona Ryder movies: “I think they’re so good”
It wouldn’t really be fair or accurate to say Winona Ryder is in the middle of a resurgence when she hasn’t gone anywhere, but the actor’s career can nonetheless be split into two distinct periods.
There were the breakout years when she first rocketed to prominence as a teenager and quickly became known as one of the fastest-rising young stars of her era, and then there was the aftermath of the shoplifting incident when she retreated from the public eye.
It seems ridiculous that being arrested for stealing designer clothes made Ryder such a pariah in the eyes of the public and the industry, especially when so many of her peers have done much worse and not seen their careers take a hit. Still, it drew a bold line under the first act of her professional life, which gave rise to many of the best movies she’s ever made.
By the time she’d left her 20s, Ryder already had two Academy Award nominations to her name and had starred in an array of acclaimed and lucrative projects hailing from some of the finest filmmakers in the business, covering multiple genres and giving plenty of accomplished performances along the way.
The combination of Netflix juggernaut Stranger Things, Tim Burton’s long-awaited legacy sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and a new wave of fans being won over by her early work has seen Ryder’s star shining brighter than it has in a long time, so there’s no reason why she can’t add to her own list of the best films she’s ever been in.
Having grown up in the public eye, Ryder doesn’t have any issues watching herself onscreen unlike many other actors, but a true test of a top-tier production is one that she becomes so engrossed in that she genuinely forgets she’s been looking at herself the whole time.
“I’m quite comfortable looking at myself in movies, probably because I’ve been doing it for so long since I was a kid,” she explained to Cinema. “So I sort of watched myself grow up and go through adolescence, like, basically on camera. And also, I’m such a film fanatic. I love movies so much. And there are a couple of movies I’ve made that I don’t even realise I’m in them. And I think they’re so good. Like The Age of Innocence, The Crucible, and Heathers.”
Martin Scorsese’s period drama was the first time Ryder felt like she’d made it as an actor, while The Crucible partnered her with Daniel Day-Lewis for an intoxicating Arthur Miller adaptation, and Heathers is a stone-cold cult classic that’s lost none of its bite.
“These movies, I think, are so amazing that I don’t mind watching myself at all,” she offered in a glowing appraisal of her best efforts, and there aren’t many out there who’d disagree with her picks.
