Winona Laura Horowitz aka Winona biography

Ranked Number 42 on Empire magazine’s Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time, in 1997, and one of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People, that same year, Winona Ryder is a two-time Academy Award nominated actress. However, despite her impressive film career, Winona’s personal life has eclipsed it in terms of notoriety. She’s perhaps best known for having dated Johnny Depp. He bears an infamous tattoo on his arm that once read “Winona Forever,” but now reads “Wino Forever.” More recently, she made international headlines for shoplifting in Beverly Hills.

Winona Ryder was named after the town in which she was born: Winona, Minnesota. Her parents quickly moved to Northern California, where she was raised in a home without electricity. Her parents are hippies, and were good friends with famed Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and LSD pioneer Timothy Leary. Leary is actually Winona’s Godfather. It would seem that pretty much made it impossible for her parents to lay down any rules while she was growing up.

Winona went to acting school in San Francisco, and landed her first part in 1986’s Lucas. The late ‘80s saw Winona enjoy a meteoric rise in success. She starred in Tim Burton’s Beetle Juice (1988) and Edward Scissorhands (1990) as well as in Heathers (1989), all of which gave her an edgy, dark persona. Edward Scissorhands is also where Winona met Johnny Depp, and began her famous relationship with him. Over the course of the ‘90s, Winona’s career continued to soar with roles in Dracula (1992), Reality Bites (1994), Little Women (1994), Alien: Resurrection (1997), and Girl, Interrupted (1999).

Winona took a self-imposed hiatus from acting in the early 2000s following her being caught for shoplifting in a Beverly Hills department store. It seems that poor Winona was too embarrassed to show her face in public, despite the outpouring of support (including those every-so-classy “Free Winona” t-shirts). 2006’s A Scanner Darkly welcomed Winona back from her five-year exile. She has a slew of projects coming out in the next couple of years, notably a starring role in J.J. Abrams update of Star Trek.