Winona Ryder

Winona Ryder

Winona Laura Horowitz (born October 29, 1971), known professionally as Winona Ryder, is an American actress and film producer. She is the recipient of a Golden Globe Award and has been nominated for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. After Ryder's film debut in Lucas (1986), she gained attention with her performance in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice (1988). She further rose to prominence with major roles in Heathers (1988), Mermaids (1990), Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). She garnered critical acclaim and two consecutive Academy Award nominations for her portrayals of socialite May Welland in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (1993) and Jo March in the film adaptation of Little Women (1994). Her other films during this period were Reality Bites (1994), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), The Crucible (1996), Celebrity (1999), and Girl, Interrupted (1999), which she also executive produced. In 2002, Ryder appeared in the critically panned box office hit Mr. Deeds, after which her career declined and she took a break from films. In 2009, she returned in the high-profile film Star Trek. In 2010, she was nominated for two Screen Actors Guild Awards: as the lead actress in When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story and as part of the cast of Black Swan. She also reunited with Burton for Frankenweenie (2012). Since 2016, she has starred as a single mother in the Netflix science fiction series Stranger Things, for which she has received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, and in 2020, she starred in the HBO drama miniseries The Plot Against America based on the Philip Roth novel.

Update this biography »
Complete biography of Winona Ryder »