Winona Ryder was born in and named after the city of Winona, Minnesota, on October 29, 1971. When she was 7 years old her family moved to the North California town of Elk, where Winona spent a couple of years on a commune with her family. Although there was no electricity or a TV set whatsoever, Winona, who had become a bookworm, was being taken to the cinema by her mother every once in a while and that experience was enough for her to decide to pursue an acting career. When Winona was 10 the family moved to Petaluma near San Francisco, where she spent hard time adapting to school because of the communal experience. With her parents' consent Winona enrolled at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco where she studied acting and began to appear in little theatre productions. Her first success came when she was chosen to star in the movie Desert Bloom, but her first major breakthrough was the role in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice. Winona then played the role of the teenager bride in the film Great Balls Of Fire. At the premiere of Great Balls Of Fire Winona met Johnny Depp, whom she dated for a while and with whom she partnered in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands. As Winona entered into her adolescence the responsibility and the pressure became greater, which exhausted her and she became ill. That is why she turned down a role in Godfather 3. Instead, she appeared in Night On Earth. Still a devoted and voracious reader, Winona became interested in literary screenplays. Around that time she broke up with Depp, began to suffer from chronic insomnia and spent some time in a medical clinic. Then Winona starred in The Age Of Innocence, which is based on a novel by Edith Wharton. In Looking For Richard and Simone she partnered with Al Pacino, in Alien Resurrection – with Sigourney Weaver, and with Angelina Jolie – in Girl, Interrupted, which won an Oscar. After her breakup with Johnny Depp, Winona dated David Duchovny and Matt Damon, with whom she became engaged in 2000 but soon the two broke up. Now Ryder keeps on reading and looking for her next role.
