Hollywood, interrupted! WHY WINONA CALLED IT QUITS

It's the strangest thing how the actress got a second shot at fame

Of all the reasons to love the nostalgic TV mega-hit Stranger Things, the full-throttle return of Winona Ryder has had many of the show's older fans rapt.

Who can forget the young actress, who rocketed to fame at the age of 17 in the quirky 1988 Tim Burton classic Beetlejuice? Throughout the '90s, Winona a Hollywood "it girl", constantly in the headlines - as much for her starring roles in movies like Age of Innocence, The Crucible, and Girl, Interrupted as she was for her high-profile romances with the likes of Johnny Depp and Matt Damon.

To her fans, it seemed she was on top of the world, but just like the movies in which she appeared, her happy life was but an illusion. Behind the scenes, the actress recently revealed she buckled under pressure.

"I know it's kind of like, 'Oh, poor Winona,'" the star, now 50, reflects. "But when you're in pain, pain is pain. That realization took me a while..."

The stress of being constantly in the public eye, at the same time as being goaded by Hollywood powerbrokers to go from one project to another without a break, slowly eroded her sanity.

In 1993, her older Age of Innocence co-star Michelle Pfeiffer could see her struggling because she'd gone through it herself.

"I remember Michelle being like, 'This is going to pass," reflects Winona. "But I couldn't hear it."

That same year, she played a character who ends up being tortured in a Chilean prison in the movie The House of Spirits.