Winona Ryder became so famous early in her career that she started losing jobs she really wanted because “there was a burden” that came with being involved in a project.
The Oscar-nominated actress spoke with Esquire UK before the release of his next film, Beetle Juice, Beetle Juice, during which she spoke openly about her fame, about being bullied after her first Beetle Juice, Stranger things and more.
Ryder explained that she reached a point in her career where she was being pushed into doing mainstream blockbusters that she wasn't particularly interested in. She felt like the industry was getting to a point where they were starting to associate her with the kind of movies she didn't want to do. And when it came to the ones she did want to do, her fame started to get in the way.
There was an obsession surrounding her and her love life, and “trying to get someone to ignore the noise around me was hard. I could see it in their eyes. I lost a lot of parts because of it,” she told the publication.
“I'm not complaining in any way,” she added. “But there was this whole period where I thought I was going to be a distraction, too. I realized that. Certainly, in the '90s, I realized that. And there was also a sense of a changing of the guard. As you get older, there are these new, young actresses. It's so ingrained in you how disposable actresses can be, our shelf life. You feel it all the time.”
Ryder's breakthrough role came when she was 16, when she played Lydia Deetz in Tim Burton's film Beetle Juicestarring Michael Keaton, Catherine O'Hara, Alec Baldwin, and Geena Davis, among others. Although the film was a hit, it didn't seem to matter to her high school classmates.
“I remember thinking it was going to, like, change my state, and it made it worse,” she said. “They were like, 'You're a witch! You're a monster!' It amplified it. I was like, 'But I'm in a movie!'”
For much of the early 2000s, the actress somewhat distanced herself from acting, appearing in smaller projects than before. When she landed the role of Joyce Byers in Stranger thingsRyder has found her way back into the zeitgeist in a way that hasn't happened to her in a long time.
It was the original attraction for the hit Netflix series, which is currently filming its fifth and final season in Atlanta. In Squire profile, the Heathers The star admitted she was “not unaware” that she was cast for the “element of nostalgia” she brought to the 1980s-set sci-fi series, as that was when she first broke into the industry.
“I went from being the youngest person on set to being the oldest,” she said, noting that it’s been 10 years since they started filming the Emmy-nominated show. “I never would have thought. [At first] I thought, “I don't want to do this when I'm fifty!” It's crazy, and it's even crazier to be my age. But I love boys and I love [the actors] Sadie [Sink] and Maia [Hawke]. It was really wonderful.”
She also noted that she brought some of her knowledge as a woman from the '80s. “I really struggled with [Joyce’s] flaws,” Ryder added. “I didn't want to be like a supermom. I wanted her to be one of those women I saw [in the movies of the 1970s and 1980s]they were just doing their best.”