Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Winona Ryder won audience’s hearts for being quirky and dark, with films like 1988’s ‘Beetlejuice’ and 1990’s ‘Edward Scissorhands’ (both helmed by Tim Burton) and, my personal favorite, 1989’s ‘Heathers.’ She made her mark as the first “manic pixie dream girl” — sure, she’s slightly different, but you can’t help but fall in love with her.

Ryder’s expressive, big eyes and penchant for sad, relatable characters made her super lovable. As the young emo-goth Lydia Deetz in ‘Beetlejuice,’ one of her first roles, she gained stand-out praise alongside established actors Michael Keaton and Alec Baldwin.

Her follow-up, as Veronica Sawyer, in the super-dark high school satire ‘Heathers,’ solidified her place as a movie star.

In 1994, Ryder won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an Academy Award nomination for her role in ‘The Age of Innocence.’ She was nominated again for the Best Actress Oscar in 1995 for ‘Little Women.’ Then she showed real chops in 1999’s ‘Girl, Interrupted,’ holding her own against Angelina Jolie’s tour-de-force performance and really making an impact on audiences. In 2000, Ryder was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Continue reading From ‘Black Swan’ to ‘The Dilemma’: Is Winona Ryder Having a Comeback?

It took six years off, presumable prescription drug treatment, and a lot of community service for Winona Ryder to make it back. And it’s a testament to the enduring appeal of her early work that three appropriately quirky supporting parts—as Commander Spock’s artificially-aged mother in Star Trek, as a deranged ballerina in Black Swan, and as Kevin James’ cheating wife upgrading to Channing Tatum in The Dilemma, in theaters on Friday—was all it took to resurrect a certain kind of American’s crush on Ryder, for GQ to declare as Johnny Depp once did, that it’s Winona Forever all over again. Continue reading Winona Ryder’s Second Act: Lessons From ‘Little Women’

With a new year quickly approaching, we’re doing more than stocking up on Champagne and re-remembering the lyrics to “Auld Lang Syne.” We’re also stopping to reflect on the year that was: and what a year 2010 was for fashion, music, and film. Ke$ha convinced us to throw away our toothbrushes; Justin Bieber melted 12-year-old hearts worldwide; and James Franco managed to juggle about nine careers at once. They (and 15 others) deserve to be recognized for their efforts! And so, without further ado, we are proud to present: Interview’s Faces of 2010.

The Cameo Queen: Winona Ryder
It’s been two decades since Heathers and Edward Scissorhands, but Winona Ryder proved this year that she’s definitely still got it. Though she wasn’t onscreen long, Ryder still managed to deliver one of the year’s most memorable performances as an ousted prima ballerina in Black Swan. She played her creepy, menacing role to such perfection that we found ourselves looking over our shoulders as we left the theater-just in case she happened to be lurking behind us. This may be the start of a legit comeback for Ryder, who has booked upcoming roles in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie, Ron Howard’s The Dilemma, and Armand Mastroianni’s Gardel.

Quotable in 2010: “Sometimes I’ll watch a movie, and it’s got some big star in it playing a working-class person, and the character is in a grocery store, and you can kind of tell, from just watching the scene, that this actor doesn’t do their own shopping. So you have to have some sense of reality. That’s why, at the height of everything, I used to go to the Laundromat to do my laundry-just because I had to sort of maintain,” Ryder said in October.

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With two scene-stealing performances on the way, Winona Ryder is about to make us fall in love with her all over again

In director Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, a disturbing psycho-thriller set in the physically harrowing world of professional ballet, it’s slightly jarring to see Winona Ryder take on such a small part, not to mention see her play an aging principal dancer, Beth, who has been strong-armed into retirement by her New York company and tidily replaced by Nina, an ambitious innocent portrayed by a gaunt Natalie Portman. The film takes on a creepy hallucinogenic bent, focusing on Nina’s mental unraveling as she obsessively prepares for her starmaking turn in the company’s risqué version of Swan Lake. Ryder can’t be on-screen for more than 20 minutes—her role lands somewhere between cameo and supporting actress. And yet, as pallid as ever, with impossibly dark eyes that dominate her valentine-shaped face, she manages to make her presence seem big. The movie wouldn’t have the same palpable tension without her.

Continue reading Winona Ryder: Girl, Resurrected