Interview : Lara Stuart
Portrait : Mark Seliger

SOUL SURVIVOR Psychological profile :
NOT YET 30, WINONA RYDER4S RICH AND VARIE LIFE HAS INCLUDED TWO VISITS TO A MENTAL HOSPITAL. ONE AS PATIENT, ONE TO FILM GIRL, INTERRUPED.

NAME : Winona Ryder, née Horovitz
BORN : 29/10/71 ; Winona, Minnesota
HEIGHT : 5'4''
PHYSICAL DISABILITIES : Injured knees, sustained during the filming of Girl, Interrupted

CASE HISTORY : Aged 19 Winona pulled out of a scheluded appearance in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part III, claiming exhaustion. Other sources suggested that problems with her boyfriend, Johnny depp, were to blame. Subsequently, Winona booked herself into a psychiatric hospital for a week, after suffering from anxiety attacks, depression and insomnia. Upon release she spent a year working with a therapist. Years later, in 1993, Winona bought the rights to Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen's memoir about her stay in a mental hospital. She produces and stars in the film version, believing that it will help people who think they are insane.

NOTES : Professional actress since the age of 13 Goddaughter to acid guru Timothy Leary Parents were writers and 60s activists. In her formative years she lived in a loose " commune " with no electricity (her house was called " the Mansion "). Previous boyfriends have included johnny Depp, Christian Slater, daved Duchovny ans Soul Asylum's David Pirner.

Winona ryder has a sensitive soul. She's the kind of person who shouldn't expose herself to undue pain. Try to avoid laying her soul bare. Best she not be reminded of past traumas. In other words, the last person who should have taken on the task of producing and starring in Girl, Interrupted. Or, to put it another way, the perfect person.

When she first encountered Susanna Kaysen's fratured and tortured memoir of teenage depresion and inhuman hospitalisation, Winona experienced a violent reaction. " It was very similar to my reaction to Catcher In The Rye, and that's saying a lot, " she laughts. " Susanna captures a mood that we've all experienced, " she continues, " because we've all faced these big questions, of whether to choose life or choose to kill ourselves. You ask yourself, " Why do I feel like I'm going crazy ? Is the world crazy or am I too sensitive to live in it ? And those are very big questions for a young girl ."

When Winona was a sensitive young girl, she, her beatnik parents and her godfather Timothy Leary lived in commune spread over 300 acres of Mendocino County. " We were no hippies, each family had their own house, " she points out. There was no television, but her mother ran a, " movie theatre out of the barn , " and this was when young winona decided to become an actress. " When I was seven or eight I loved the glamour of it all : Greer Garson in Random Harvest, Natalie Wood in Splendor In the Grass - I wanted to be like all those beautiful actresses ."
She didn't have long to wait for those wishes to come true. Auditioning by reading JD Salinger, Winona made her debut in teen drama Lucas before landing role in string of hit movies including Beetlejuice, Mermaids, Edward Scissorhands and Heathers.

Although, the work forced Winona to drop out of school, she refuses to beleive that high school was something she could ever have " got into ". " I've been told that I've missed out, but I don't really feel like there's something missing. I was put on a home-study correspondence course and I did very well academically , I graduated from high school. " However by the age of 19, the demands of constant work and public scrutnity were starting to tell."

There was a time when I was 19, when I really, really, really thought I was going crasy and exhausted and going through adolescence onscreen. " Things came to a head when Winona found herself caught up in the tragic kidnapping of a young neighbour, 12 year old Polly Klaas. Winona made a personal appeal offerinf a reward for information as to the girl's whereabouts. No-one came forward and the girl was later found dead. She had been sexually assaulted and them murdered.
It was the final straw. Winona decided it was time to, in her own words, " Check myself into a home for crazies."

Although her asylum experience did not amount to much - " I would just walk around "- the whole period was enough to spotlight the importance of Susanna Kaysen's best-selling book. Although winona left for a year of therapy after only a few days, Susanna (in real life and in the film) was not so lucky. " In the 60s, when the movie takes place, they locked you up for years at a time if you were just a sensitive person. There was nothing really wrong with Susanna, she was a " borderline personality ", and they called her that because they couldn't diagnose her ."
Sensitive soul that she is, Winona is not even sure if the world " crazy " has any currency anymore. " I would never presume to call anyone crazy. I think the world is crazy, this world is insane, and I don't think it's fair for anybody in it to call anybody else crazy. I think we're all crazy, everyoneof us has strange impulses ; it's only about how much we can control ourselves."

These days, Winona is much more in control ; she has to be. After acquiring the rights to Girl in 1993, she spent seven years bringing her vision to the screen. Actively involved in all aspects of the casting process (she handpicked director James Mangold after viewing his debut feature, Heavy), once Winona got on set, circumstances dictated that she became very much a hands-off producer. " I never broke character, Istayed in the framework of Susanna the whole time. Inever left Harrisburg hospital, where we filmed. I just spent a lot of time sulking around."

The result of all the sulking is the best film Winon has made since Gary Oldman bit her neck in Dracula. Her co-star, Angelina Jolie, may be stealing most of the acting plaudits- she has the showier role as the charming sociopath, Lisa- but there's no doubt this is Winona's triumph, and she is justifiably proud."

If this movie had come out and I'd seen it when I was young, I would have been so fucking grateful ; because I would have felt so much less alone seeing a movie about a girl going through a time in her life like this. " In her quest for challengin roles, Winona made some risky professional choices during the 90s, and in the process put a halt to a meteoric rise which could have seenher challenging Julia Roberts as Hollywood's number one female star. It is not something winona has any regrets about. " I hope that this movie will offer some comfort to girls out there, because girls don't really get alot of movies - speaking as one ; guys get a lot more movies than girls do, and that's a drag. We insult their intelligence by offering them a movie like Runaway Bride and thinking it will sate them. That's not going to cut it, because that's fun and romantic, but it's a popcorn movie ; girls want over things besides that."

While Winona's professional choices havenot always been entirely successful, her reasoning, at least, seems sound. Unfortunately, the same cannot always be said for choices in her personal life. However, the string of unsuitable partners and painful, public breakups,which took in actors Johnny Depp and Christian Slater and musicians David Pirner and Dave Grohl, at last seems to have ended with the clean-cut Matt Damon.

The couple were introduced at a party in 19997 by mutual friend Gwyneth Paltrow, and given the past turmoil, her two-year relationship with Damon is a subject Winona is reluctant to discuss- beyond declaring that Matt is, " A very, very,, very, very, very good guy . " However, Winona has come to realise that ultimately there is only one person on whom she can rely : " I've learned over the years in my life that it's bad if you rely on relationships to make you secure. I hate to sound cynical, but I think you should rely on yourself. All my friends who've relied on their partners have always gotten screwed."

Say goodbye to the neurotic wallflower, and hello to an empowered female producer. That damon fella had better behave himself.