Winona Ryder’s wise decision to avoid her worst-ever movie: “I’ll just say I haven’t seen it”
An actor can never make a perfect filmography for themselves (unless they’re John Cazale) because they’re inevitably going to stumble into a project that, on the surface, looks great, but actually turns out to be a massive flop. Then there are instances that leave you wondering whether an actor simply needed to pay off some debts, because there’s no way Michael Caine would’ve seen any artistic merit in Jaws: The Revenge or Robert De Niro would’ve found Dirty Grandpa a challenging film.
For Winona Ryder, an early string of successes set her career off in the right direction, with partnerships with Tim Burton in the form of Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands marking her out as an actor interested in all things weird and wonderful, refusing to conform to the popular teen movie Brat Pack echelon. Instead, she often appeared in moody yet humorous roles, dazzling with her performance as Veronica Sawyer in the darkly comic Heathers alongside Christian Slater, playing the high-schooler fed up with hierarchy who soon turns to murder.
The 1990s saw Ryder move between some indie dramas and unforgettable period dramas, working alongside filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, Martin Scorsese, and Gillian Armstrong, although the end of the decade marked a period of decline for the star. Following the critical failure of the 1996 movie Boys, Ryder managed to find acclaim with The Crucible, although it only made $7.3million at the box office against a budget of $25m.
Ryder ventured into the world of sci-fi next, opting for a role alongside Sigourney Weaver in Alien Resurrection, which polarised critics and fans of the long-running franchise. While the actor was still delivering strong performances, many of her choices during this period were questionable, resulting in one of the worst movies of her career, Lost Souls. She might have found success with Girl, Interrupted the year prior, but she was soon back to roles that failed to prove her brilliance.
Lost Souls, directed by Janusz Kamiński, saw Ryder play an intensely religious school teacher who becomes convinced that a writer is actually the embodiment of Satan. Unfortunately, it was a massive failure on all fronts.
Her choice to star in the movie had something to do with Ryder’s friendship with the director, whom she had met a few years earlier when Kamiński was working as a cinematographer on How to Make an American Quilt. The actor soon realised, however, that this wasn’t going to be a great film. That’s just the risk you sometimes have to take in Hollywood.
“I wanted very much to work with Janusz, who’s a friend,” Ryder explained to Vogue in 1999. Yet, in regards to whether she likes the movie or not, Ryder answered somewhat cryptically: “I’ll just say that I haven’t seen it.” So, while she couldn’t avoid the fact she’d been in the film, all Ryder could do was pretend that she knew little about it, allowing it to become a forgotten number in her filmography. Since then, she has appeared in many better projects, from Black Swan to Stranger Things, which have better proved her talents.
