Cool Ryder

She’s the star of a Netflix phenomenon and she doesn’t even use social media, but when you’re as iconic as Winona Ryder, you live by your own rules. Here, the Stranger Things actress talks settling down, recycling clothes and being the ultimate Hollywood rebel

- Helena De Bertodano

Winona Ryder has only just started talking when we are interrupted by the seductively rasping voice of Leonard Cohen: ‘If you want a partner, take my hand…’ It’s the ringtone of her phone, set to I’m Your Man, the title track of Cohen’s legendary 1988 album. She giggles as she pulls it out of her jumbled bag to turn it off. On her phone case is an image of Patti Smith, whose music provided the soundtrack to much of Ryder’s adolescence.

Spending time with Ryder is like being in a time warp. The 80s – when she starred in a succession of cult movies, including Beetle juice and Heathers – was her decade, even though she was only a teenager. When the late Terry Wogan interviewed her in 1991 – then 19 and engaged to her Edward Scissorhands’ co-star Johnny Depp – he introduced her as ‘the most exciting young actress in America today’. But then, for some reason, her star stopped rising. Despite winning a Golden Globe for her captivating performance as May Welland in Martin Scorsese’s 1993 Age Of Innocence, the rest of the decade was less memorable. ‘I’ve definitely done some clunkers,’ she says of her subsequent movie choices. In 2001, she was infamously arrested for shoplifting, prompting a trial that revealed her drug use and depression. Aged just 30, it seemed that Ryder would become a footnote in movie history, remembered more for her crime and her relationship with Depp than for her exceptional abilities as an actress.