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Winona Laura Horowitz (born (1971-10-29)October 29, 1971), known professionally as Winona Ryder, is an American actress. Having come to attention with quirkier roles in the initial phase of her career, she achieved fame and critical success with her more diverse performances in various genres throughout the 1990s. Ryder's many accolades include a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA, and a Grammy. Following her film debut in Lucas (1986), Ryder rose to prominence when she played the supporting part of Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice (1988). Major parts in Heathers (1989), Edward Scissorhands, Mermaids (both 1990), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) came next. She earned two consecutive Oscar nominations—Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress—for her portrayals of May Welland in The Age of Innocence (1993) and Jo March in Little Women (1994), respectively. Her subsequent work included starring roles in Reality Bites (1994), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), The Crucible (1996), Alien Resurrection (1997), Celebrity (1998), Girl, Interrupted (1999), Autumn in New York (2000), and Mr. Deeds (2002). Ryder took a break from acting in the early 2000s, later returning with smaller appearances in films such as A Scanner Darkly (2006), Star Trek (2009), Black Swan (2010), and The Dilemma (2011). For her portrayal of Lois Wilson in the Hallmark television film When Love Is Not Enough (2010), she was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie. Since 2016, she has played Joyce Byers on the Netflix series Stranger Things, for which she received her third Golden Globe nomination. Her other television projects include the HBO miniseries The Plot Against America (2020). Early life Winona Laura Horowitz was born in Winona County, Minnesota, to Cynthia Palmer (née Istas) and Michael D. Horowitz. Her mother is an author, video producer, and editor, and her father is an author, editor, publisher, and antiquarian bookseller. He also worked as an archivist for psychologist Timothy Leary (Ryder's godfather). Her father's family is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and hails from Ukraine and Romania. Growing up, she visited her paternal grandparents in Brooklyn for the Jewish Holiday of Passover, every year. Named after Winona, Minnesota, Ryder was given her middle name, Laura, because of her parents' friendship with Laura Huxley, writer Aldous Huxley's wife. Her stage name derives from Mitch Ryder, a soul and rock singer of whom her father was a fan. Ryder's father is an atheist and her mother is a Buddhist. Ryder has a younger brother, Urie (named in honor of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin), and two older half-siblings from her mother's prior marriage: half-brother Jubal Palmer and half-sister Sunyata Palmer. Ryder's family friends were her godfather Timothy Leary, the Beat Movement poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and the science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick. In 1978, when Ryder was seven years old, she and her family relocated to Rainbow, a commune near Elk, Mendocino County, California, where they lived with seven other families on a 300-acre (120 ha) plot of land. As the remote property had no electricity or television sets, Ryder began to devote her time to reading and became an avid fan of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. When she was ten, Ryder and her family moved to Petaluma, California. During her first week at Kenilworth Junior High, she was bullied by children who mistook her for an effeminate boy. In 1983, 12-year-old Ryder enrolled at the American Conservatory Theater in nearby San Francisco, where she took her first acting lessons. During the same year she nearly drowned, which caused her to develop aquaphobia. This psychological trauma caused problems later in her life during the underwater scenes in Alien Resurrection (1997), some of which had to be reshot numerous times. Ryder's bullying experiences continued through high school, when she achieved early film success with Beetlejuice: "I remember thinking, 'Ooh, it's like the number-one movie. This is going to make things great at school.' But it made things worse. They called me a witch." In 1989, Ryder graduated from Petaluma High School with a 4.0 GPA. Ryder has stated that her natural hair color is brown, but she was "really blonde as a kid", and when she was 11 or 12 she started dyeing her blonde hair, blue and purple. At the time of her audition for the 1986 film Lucas, her hair had been dyed black and the filmmakers asked her to keep it. Career 1985–1990: Early roles and breakthrough In 1985, Ryder sent a videotaped audition, where she recited a monologue from the novel Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger, to appear in the film Desert Bloom. Although the role went to Annabeth Gish, writer/director David Seltzer cast her in his high school drama Lucas (1986), which starred Corey Haim, Charlie Sheen, and Kerri Green. When asked how she wanted her name to appear in the credits, she suggested "Ryder" as her surname because a Mitch Ryder album that belonged to her father was playing in the background. Ryder's next film was Square Dance (1987), where her teenage character creates a bridge between two different worlds—a traditional farm in the middle of nowhere and a large city. She won acclaim for the performance, with the Los Angeles Times calling it "a remarkable debut." Both films were only marginally successful commercially. After seeing her in Lucas, director Tim Burton cast Ryder in his film Beetlejuice (1988). Ryder starred as a goth teenager whose family moves to a haunted house populated by ghosts played by Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, and Michael Keaton. The film was a success at the box office, and the film as well as Ryder's performance received mostly positive reviews from critics. Also in 1988, Ryder appeared alongside Kiefer Sutherland and Robert Downey Jr. in 1969, a drama about the Vietnam War and the tensions it created in American families. Ryder next starred in the independent film Heathers (1989). The film, a satirical take on teenage life, featured Ryder and Christian Slater as high school sweethearts who begin killing off popular students. Ryder's agent initially begged her to turn the role down, saying the film would "ruin her career". Critical reaction to the film was largely positive, and Ryder's performance was positively received, with The Washington Post calling Ryder "Hollywood's most impressive ingénue […] Ryder […] makes us love her teen-age murderess, a bright, funny girl with a little Bonnie Parker in her. She is the most likable, best-drawn young adult protagonist since the sexual innocent of Gregory's Girl." Despite its critical success, Heathers was a box-office flop, but has achieved the status of a cult film in the following decades. Ryder’s other 1989 starring role was in the biopic Great Balls of Fire!, in which she played the 13-ye.... Discover the Kristina Mathews popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Kristina Mathews books.