'''Winona Ryder''' (born '''Winona Laura Horowitz''' on October 29 1971 in Olmsted County, Minnesota) is an Academy Award-nominated American actress. She is widely known for her work in the cult classic ''
Heathers'', and many other films such as ''
Girl, Interrupted'', ''
Little Women'', ''
Beetlejuice'' and ''
Edward Scissorhands''.
Early life
Ryder was born in Olmsted County, Minnesota and was named after the nearby city of Winona; her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Romania. Her mother is Cindy Horowitz (née Istas) and her father is Michael Horowitz. Her father's family was originally named Tomchin, however Ryder has stated that they were wrongly assigned the name of the family that they were travelling with when they arrived at Ellis Island in 1906. She has a younger brother Yuri (named after Yuri Gagarin), an older half-brother Jubal and an older half-sister Sunyata. Notable family friends include her godfather Timothy Leary and beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
When Ryder was seven years old, she and her family relocated to Rainbow, a commune near Elk, California, where they lived with seven other families on a 300-acre (1.2 km²) plot of land. As the remote property had no electricity or television sets, Ryder took to reading. Her mother did, however, show her some films on a screen in the barn and consequently, she developed an interest in acting.
At the age of ten, Ryder and her family moved on again to Petaluma, California. During her first week at the local junior high school she was bullied by a group of thugs who mistook her for an effeminate, scrawny boy. As a result, she ended up being homeschooled that year. Nevertheless, around this time, she started attending the American Conservatory Theater in nearby San Francisco, where she started taking her first acting lessons.
Film career
1985–1990
In 1985, Ryder sent a video audition to appear in the film ''Desert Bloom'' but she was rejected. However, David Seltzer, a writer and director, soon noticed her and cast her for his 1986 film ''
Lucas'' in the role of a friend of the main character. When asked how she wanted her name to appear in the credits, she suggested "Ryder" as her surname as a Mitch Ryder album which belonged to her father was playing in the background.
Her next movie was ''
Square Dance'' (1987) (called "a remarkable debut" by ''The Los Angeles Times''), where her teenage character creates a bridge between two different worlds – a ''traditional farm in the middle of nowhere'' and a ''Big City''. The film considered the question of how much of our
