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In "Girl, Interrupted," Winona Ryder draws
on Susanna Kaysen's memoir of life in a mental
institution and on personal experience as well.

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insomnia, and stayed for a few days.
"It was a really tough year," recalls
Ryder. "It would be for anybody,
regardless of what they're doing,
hen Winona Ryder was
whether it's cramming for exams or
19, she was a mess.
their parents driving them crazy or
There were the normal
breaking up with first loves. It's the
coming-of-age catastro-
year
where life is going crazy, and
phes, such as the rocky times with her
everything was going crazy in mine. It
first long-term boyfriend and the
was amplified because it was in the
intensity of her work schedule. And
papers. Every step I was taking was
then there were the complications
being written about."
peculiar to Ryder's life. The boyfriend
Kaysen's book resonated power-
was tabloid magnet Johnny Depp, her
fully with Ryder. It sug-
career was racing on
gested she wasn't crazy
Above: Wi nona Ryder
Hollywood's fast track, and
for reeling under so
and
Ange
ling
Jolie
in
Ryder lived under the
Inte
rrupted."
much stress. Before read-
microscope of celebrity.
ing Girl, Interrupted,
Most stars clam up when Ryder took an active
Ryder couldn't even justi-
the discussion turns to their role as exe cutive
producer of the film.
fy her pain to her closest
most difficult days, but
friends, never mind the
Ryder is refreshingly forth-
media. The notion that everyone is a
coming at a recent Beverly Hills,
potential victim of anxiety attacks —
Calif, interview set up to promote her
even the rich and pampered — was a
new film, Girl, Interrupted. Stylishly
revelation.
dressed in black to match her boyish,
"I know how nauseating it is to
dark mahogany hair, the 28-year-old
hear actors complain, and I don't want
Ryder candidly acknowledges the par-
to be one of those people," declares
allels between the movie and her per-
Ryder. "But it's important to know
sonal life. Ryder first encountered
that everyone is human. There were
Susanna Kaysen's memoir of the two
times when I would lose a friend, go
wild years she spent in a mental insti-
to a funeral and come home to find a
tution after experiencing a similar
bunch
of photographers around. They
breakdown.
would hassle me for not posing for
In 1990, Ryder checked herself into
any pictures, then call me a brat."
the sleep-disorder ward of a psychi-
Kaysen's book helped Ryder reha-
atric hospital, suffering "terrible"

JOEY BERLIN and DERA REVEL
Copley News Service

IJ1

DINA FUCHS
Special to the Jewish News

With nearly two dozen movie
VW roles to her credit, actress
Winona Ryder is a far cry from the
litde girl who grew up in a home
without so much as a television set
Born Winona Laura Horowitz,
named after the small Minnesota
town of Winona where she is from,
Ryder and her three siblings were
raised on a commune in Northern
California. Her parents, who married
when she was 11 years old, V.rere intel-
lectuals submersed in the '60s Beat
community and close personal friends
with poet Allen Ginsberg and LSD
proponent Dr. Timothy Leary, who
was Ryder's godfather.
When she was a teenager, "Noni,"
as she is called by friends, and her
family moved to nearby Petaluma,
Calif After being put on home stu dy
due to the taunts of children in her
public school, she found the time to
begin taking acting classes at San
Francisco's American Conservatory
Theatre. She opted to change her
ethnic sounding surname after she
scored her first film role in 1986's

Lucas.
"They were saying, 'What do you
want on the credits?' And I was say-

Dina Fuchs is an Atanta-based
freelance writer.

