This star of Stranger Things has been an eclectic sensation for years, long before the world
found out she may technically be married to one of Hollywood's biggest action stars.
Here's a rundown of some of the strangest things about Winona Ryder.
Raised in a commune
Ryder was raised with a gaggle of other families on a commune in Elk, California.
She told The Telegraph,
"It was pretty incredible.
We were in 380 acres of redwoods and there was no electricity."
"I mean, now I appreciate it because we didn't have television, so we read a lot, I don't
think I would have read as much, and we played theater games."
Her godfather was LSD advocate Timothy Leary, but Ryder insisted to The Independent that
she wasn't exposed to drugs when spending time with him.
Still, she admitted that her parents took away the mystery of experimenting and encouraged
her to consult an adult if she ever did want to try something.
She added,
"I never wanted to because they were telling me exactly everything about it, that you could
freak out in a crowd, in a concert."
"We weren't repressed, you know.
We didn't have to go find out for ourselves what it was all about."
Reaction to bullies
Ryder's off-kilter persona has delighted moviegoers for decades, but when she was younger, her
idiosyncrasies caused kids around her to react in pretty mean ways.
Discussing her Edward Scissorhands alter ego, Kim, she told The New York Times,
"Kim was like the girls in eighth grade who called me a weirdo and threw Cheetos at me.
I had a crew cut, and I liked the Sex Pistols."
But it was Ryder's reaction to the bullying that seems a little zany.
She explained,
"I got beat up in seventh grade by some boys.
That was kind of great in a way.
I was so into movies it seemed dramatic.
I felt like a gangster."
Self-sabotage
In 2001, just as Ryder was riding high on a wave of starring movie roles, she created
a tabloid frenzy after being caught shoplifting at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills.
According to The New York Times, she was convicted, but not jailed, on grand theft and vandalism
charges for taking more than $5,000 worth of merchandise from the store.
She later told Porter Magazine that it was an act of self-sabotage, saying,
"Psychologically, I must have been at a place where I just wanted to stop.
I won't get into what happened, but it wasn't what people think.
And it wasn't like the crime of the century!
But it allowed me time that I really needed, where I went back to San Francisco and got
back into things that…I just had other interests, frankly."
"Husband" Keanu
Action star Keanu Reeves is undoubtedly the subject of marital fantasy for many of his
adoring fans.
But in the case of his frequent co-star and longtime friend, Winona Ryder, that fantasy
became a reality in 1992 thanks to their wedding scene in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Ryder later explained to EW in 2018 that she and Reeves actually got married during the
scene, because director Francis Ford Coppola, quote, "used a real Romanian priest" for the
ceremony, a detail Coppola actually confirmed to The Guardian.
"I didn't really believe her, and then Francis Ford Coppola, the director of Dracula, contacted
Winona and said publicly that, yeah, that actually happened."
The news, of course, lit the internet ablaze.
"Yeah, once in a while I’ll get a text: 'Hello, husband.'"
As strange as the situation is, when asked on The Talk if the whole thing was real, perennial
good guy Reeves answered:
"Yeah, it's awesome."
"That's awesome!"
"We love it!"
"Yeah!"
No Netflix and chill
One of the most endearing parts of Ryder's press circuit alongside her child co-stars
in Stranger Things was how completely oblivious she was to the streaming platform for which
the show was made.
Unlike the tech-savvy tykes that star alongside her in the show, you won't find an official
Ryder Instagram online.
She told Net-a-Porter,
"I'm not on [social media].
I'm very private so I can't imagine what I'd want to share with the world.
I can't even take selfies; I literally just learned about the button that makes the screen
flip.
I think [social media] is a bit dangerous, in terms of self-obsession.
It's so important to look outward."
Ryder has also copped to still keeping VHS tapes of concerts and cassettes with old voicemails,
confirming that she is, indeed, loyally lingering in the era that made her famous, at least
where technology is concerned.
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