Q: What made you decide to bring Winona Ryder into the Star Trek fold?

JJ: I’d always been a fan of Winona’s. One of the models that we had for this movie was Superman, the Dick Donner film. The way that he cast that film, all the lead roles were essentially unknowns and many of the supporting roles were people that you had seen before and knew, to some degree, and obviously, with Marlon Brando, knew very well. I just thought it would be nice, given that we had a cast that was, for the most part, unknowns that we give roles that we could to actors that were known. Eric Bana is essentially hidden in disguise in this movie. You can’t really recognize him. For the role of Amanda, to get Winona Ryder was just one of those things where I thought it would be great to have an actress who people would recognize and, hopefully, not get pulled out of the movie, but feel like there was some support for the younger, fresher faces.

Read the full interview here