Does Winona Ryder still have a reputation for being intelligent and thoughtful?

CORRECTION: I don't think she's as crazy as people claim.

She looks like an unhinged cunt

I mean, you don't actually know her as a person, so how can you say whether she's dim or sharp, crazy or nice, or some combination of all four?

r3 Based on what I've watched/read in interviews. People do have opinions on celebrities.

I remember when the moody bookworm turned junkie shoplifter.

She seems very intelligent and weird, which is a good combo.

R4 I'm sure they do. It's misguided and pathetic, when you stop to think about it.

We don't know these people at all. We've never met them. We have no right to judge their personality or life, or impose our values on them.

She seems introverted and mentally troubled, which isn't a bad thing. I think her fame on top of the pills from Dr. Feelgood made her go totally nuts for a few years, but she seems fine now.

No you don't R5, because she was always a shoplifter. You remember when she got caught!

I always assumed she was leaning hard into her intellectual side because of the big tits.

She seems to have dropped that persona once she got older and then adopted it again after her buy none, get all free escapades.

FYI…. Op is the Kate Jackson troll

Sanpaku eyes

I mean she was raised by artsy hippies. Her having big tits doesn’t really preclude intellectualism….

Here's the Noni Ryder blind item megalist (not from CDaN, from Cosmo and this was from years ago).

Go to post 578 and you'll learn a lot about Noni Ryder. I don't know if this contains all of them but you'll get enough to get a feel for what she's actually like. It's not the kind of crazy that's a phase or situational, this is full-on personality disorder and that shit never actually goes away. Enjoy!

I can think of few public figures who have paid a bigger price than she has for a quarter-century old transgression.

Robert Downey Jr. broke into a stranger’s home and hid in a bedroom while strung out. No one cares anymore (not after making billions for Marvel).

It’s unfortunate she hasn’t received the same level of opportunity and forgiveness.

R14 578 just says "Come back Winona!".

Do you mean reply 1 with all the blind items?

But it wasn't just about her stealing, R15, it was about her being a fucking asshole that people didn't want to work with anyway.

People LIKED RDJ, they always liked him. He also always showed up for work although not always in the greatest shape. They still liked him and he was pleasant and funny and a nice person most of the time. Winona was deeply unpleasant and routinely bullied people at work. She didn't have the goodwill RDJ had amassed.

I've always liked her work and I don't care if she steals shit from Saks. I hate her other behavior and I have a zero tolerance policy for personality disorders. Zero.

I could have forgiven her a lot if she had even one drop of talent.

She doesn't.

I guess so, R16, thanks.

I must have read the numbers incorrectly somehow.

Loss Prevention watches her a lot more carefully whenever she goes into a store

Those blind items feel bizarrely false and planted. Didn’t they all come out at once when she got arrested? The Girl, Interrupted one doesn’t make sense, she and Brittany Murphy became best friends immediately after filming ended, it’s more likely Angelina was the one who made that scene (if it happened, which I seriously doubt…)

She wasn't very articulate back in the 90s, took forever to get to the point. Here she is with Depp talking about HIV.

R17 You do know a personality disorder is a mental illness that people can’t turn on/off like a switch?

R11 Ok, why would we care?

Yes, R23, I am aware that these dangerous and untrustworthy fucking psychos are unable to control their mental illnesses. That's one of the reasons why it makes such good sense to never have a fucking thing to do with them.

A zero tolerance policy is just that - zero tolerance. I won't have them around me. They're not welcome in my house. If I'm at someone else's house and an NPD or BPD shows up, I make my excuses and get out of there as soon as possible. Others can hang around with them all they want. I don't want to hear their lying bullshit, I don't want to listen to their poor-me whining or grandiose fantasy life. They lie as easily as breathing and they are not to be trusted.

Other people can put up with their insanity if they want to, I won't do it. End of.

R25 When you say BPD, are you referring to bipolar or borderline?

What's your opinion on avoidant personality disorder?

R25 HAS STATED HER BOUNDARIES.

Stealing is one of the things sociopaths do. When I heard that story I just fig she’s a sociopath. R13 Jayne Mansfield had a high IQ.

BPD = Borderline Personality Disorder to me but it can be used for Bipolar Disorders and I don't much want them around me either, although at least they respond well to medication.

Avoidant PD's are a pain in the fucking ass. I avoid them too but I don't know any or at least I'm not aware that I know any. I don't want to deal with any of it. I've dealt with it in the past more than once and I haven't got the time, the patience or the interest to ever deal with these psychos again. I'm not required to deal with people's mentally ill shit and I simply won't do it.

You bet your fucking ass I have stated my boundaries. I'm getting rid of the psychos NOW so I won't have to deal with all their craziness and get rid of them THEN.

‘88-‘94

Beetlejuice

Heathers

Edward Scissorhands

Reality Bites

Amazing

Her 90’s filmography is iconic, and she deserved her Oscar nominations. But the bitch is barely lucid and it’s no coincidence she doesn’t do press events anymore.

I enjoy her in movies but hasn’t she been a drug addict for awhile?

Yes she has been a drug addict for a while, R32. She was definitely using when she was with Johnny Depp. She started dating him when she was 17 (officially not until she turned 18) and that was in 1989.

More than 30 years of drug abuse is a long time.

It doesn’t help matters when your godfather is Timothy Leary!

R33 So they were a co-dependent druggie couple? It's easy to overlook that when the couple is attractive. What kind of drugs did they do together? Is he the one who introduced her to drugs?

Not likable.

I never considered her thoughtful or intelligent although I like her

What's the deal with the weird faces she makes? Even in court for shoplifting, she was chewing scenery with her body language and facial expressions.

Uma Thurman’s godfather is Timothy Leary.

Well, I suppose one person can have more than one godchild, because he was Winona Ryder’s godfather as well.

R40 So, is she kind of a nepo baby too?

She has a reputation as a thieving cunt.

I always liked that the book of 'Girl, Interrupted' meant so much to her and she was passionate about making it into a film. The movie isn't very good, but the book was excellent and I think it speaks well of her that she recognized the quality of the source material and would even read her favorite passages while promoting the film on talk shows.

That story about Paltrow stealing the script for "Shakespeare in Love" out of Winona's apartment is silly. If the producers wanted Winona, they would have found a way to contact her.

When did she ever present as intelligent & thoughtful??

R45 Back when she was with Depp, the media painted them as a beat-poet couple who loved classic literature.

Just because the media says so, doesn't mean everyone buys into the bucket of bullshit.

R47 Well, what's your opinion of her alone, and with Depp as a couple?

With dep as a couple weren’t they drug addicts?

Only a true cunt would hold that shoplifting charge against her. I've always enjoyed her work.

I do like her but not because of her “intelligence”

Pictures of Depp speak for themselves.

They are both creations of their PR machines. Fantastic Plastic. Their drug use & abuse busted them out of those crafted images at times & we got & get to see who they really are. Not pretty, but oh so laughable. Much comic value in those two, as individuals and as a couple.

R52 So they weren't seen as a classy couple? How much of their image/images was a PR creation?

She's a bookworm, but I don't think she ever went to college.

Thee was a fascinating Winona thread on DL a few years ago that basically said Winona has been through hell and back (most of which the public doesn't even know about), and tptb in Hollywood see to it that Noni and her fragile, eternally delicate psyche is treated with kid gloves at all times.

I thought she was perfectly cast as the washed up prima ballerina in Black Swan.

Celebrities reading books is an old trope for reporters and publicists alike. The vast majority are box-of-hair dumb, the few who aren't don't advertise it.

I never thought she was either of those things .

R55 To hell and back? What happened to her?

beetlejuice 2 is happening

Beetlejuice is the only Tim burin movie I like I might watch a part 2

I’ve heard such shitty things about her honestly. I don’t know what she’s like these days, but during her heyday she was just awful. And so fucking full of herself. She really believed her own hype.

r61 Examples?

Tripping out of her gourd

she likes to fondle david harbour

[quote]Celebrities reading books is an old trope for reporters and publicists alike. The vast majority are box-of-hair dumb, the few who aren't don't advertise it.

I think both the stupidity *and* intelligence of celebrities tends to be exaggerated. It's a bit more interesting than realizing that famous person X is of just average or slightly above intelligence, albeit (in some cases) with one or two exceptional talents.

We all have our prejudices, and I certainly have mine. I've been pleasantly surprised in the past to learn that someone who was successful in the fashion world turned out to be cultured and well read as well. Lame, I know, and very ignorant at that. I have since grown out of it and try to keep an open mind as much as possible.

I thought that Madonna haughtily correcting a reporter's pronunciation of "Paglia" (he pronounced the G) in a TV interview actually made her look kind of stupid, impolite, and disrespectful.

I'm neutral on Winona Ryder, though I like that GenX-dominated DataLounge still seems to have a collective soft spot for her. As for her reputation for being "intelligent and thoughtful," one of the reasons for that might be as superficial as the fact that she was popular around the time when blonde bombshell Pamela Anderson was at the height of her popularity. Ryder was brunette and petite with short hair (some of the time anyway), which some people may have "read" as thoughtful and intelligent.

Depp wrote the preface to a recent UK edition of J.P. Donleavy's Irish novel "The Ginger Man." He's supposedly a big fan of the book and has been trying for years to bring it to the screen. If he indeed wrote the preface himself, it's not nearly as bad as you might think.

Depp really is dumb though. Every interview where he’s not just answering simple questions about himself is him trying to spit out a sentence in twice the length of time that an average person takes. He always comes off as an intellectual poseur.

Why DID she steal the things from that shop? Did she ever explain why?

[quote] Why DID she steal the things from that shop?

She wanted to arrange them more attractively in another store's window, Rose.

R62, she was fucking Christian Bale off and on at one point and his personal assistant said that she was horribly abusive to her personal assistant at the time. (All these celebrities have assistants to be at their beck and call.) It’s kind of ironic that Bale ended up marrying one of Winona’s PAs.

She was overhyped as an actress and you’ll never convince me otherwise. Her obvious belief that she was up there with some of the greats struck me as borderline delusional.

There was an article in some magazine where she did a round table with some other actresses-I know Glenn Close was part of it—and she was so arrogant. She talked about how her looks meant that she always got attention or something like that. You know the whole ‘I’m so good looking people dont always take me seriously so I have to push back against that’ narrative. Glenn put her in her place, because she was like, you don’t have to worry if you’re dressed like that. The journalist described her outfit and she was dressed like a complete slob so her little rant about being so good looking was especially ridiculous.

Overall, she was just an asshole.

r69 Why did her relationship with Depp end? The official story is that her parents didn't want her to get married because of how young she was, but they didn't seem to care when they were dating. Cheating?

I don't know if she was necessarily considered 'intelligent' as she was considered more 'alternative', cynical and seemed to embody the Gen X temperament of the 90's. And remember, her two of her earliest film roles - Beetlejuice and Heathers - cemented that perception. Then Reality Bites came along and her persona was written in stone.

Remember - she didn't go to college - so her interest in writers, artists and learning about the world (as people in their early to mid 20's do) seeped into her interviews.

I've always liked her. So she shoplifted - at least it was from Saks. I do believe she also had some drug issues. But - to be fair - SO DID I during the 80s and 90s!!!

R70 for all the gossip I have heard about Winona through the years, I have never heard anything about that other than Winona saying she was just too young for marriage.

She supposedly had casting input into several of her movies (including Girl Interrupted, where she held the rights to the book and received an Executive Producer credit), and is said to have had a hand in recommending actors like Claire Danes, Christian Bale, and Samantha Mathis for Little Women, and Angelina Jolie for Girl Interrupted. According to Francis Ford Coppola, the cast of Bram Stoker’s Dracula reflected Winona’s preferences. (Keanu Reeves, Winona?)

She worked with a lot of up-and-comers at the period in the 90s when her career was well-established and going well, and if she were supportive of peers who went on to have longer success, I could see that being something that fostered for her a sense of good will that carries over into current efforts.

There is definitely something “off” about her - in addition to the shoplifting, she gave a detailed public account of meeting and befriending the literary hoaxer JT Leroy in circumstances that couldn’t have aligned with reality (saying she met him before he was famous, at a point in time when there was no one publicly portraying Leroy). That long list of early 90s blind items about starlets behaving badly that all turned out to be about Winona also suggested a lot of problems behind the scenes. However, a lot of people who become big stars in their teens/early twenties struggle with mental health and substance use in ways Winona reportedly shared, and she chose to live a very private life mostly out of the spotlight. She may be dotty, fragile, and mean to the “help”, but she’s not someone who goes on long, indecipherable Twitter rants, or appears on talk shows slagging off of other people in the industry.

She may not be a genius, but I can buy she has sharp enough instincts to play politics well and avoid blowing up professional bridges.

Lost respect for her when she was complicit in the whole stupid JT Leroy story.

Benzos make you steal. It's one of those side effects that people don't talk about much

If you ever heard Winona give interviews in the '90s (as opposed to reading her interviews, because anyone can be edited to appear intelligent), you wouldn't have thought of her as an intellectual.

"I think Dracula is, like, the prince of darkness?" - soundbite from the promotion of Dracula, upspeak and all.

She was a working child actor; there are going to be huge gaps in socialization and subjects learned.

Also, she missed the repetition and drudgery required to retain many foundational concepts.

The whole, “Stars are just like you and me” crap doesn’t apply here. This is a different animal.

R67 Women with eating disorders are epic thieves. It's about taking what you feel you shouldn't have, the thrill of getting away with it (EDs are all about secrets), if you've shut off your hunger cues for food, it manifests in other places.

I did some searching, and only one older thread on Noni had surfaced. I remember going through older ones with a lot of dishy gossip that are seemingly gone.

They were interesting, especially how long term spans they took to fill. Now finding a thread from the twenty-teens is about as old as they go. When I first found this site threads from the early 00s were still visible (I found this site in the second half of the twenty-teens.)

when i was a kid i was so in love with her and suzanne vega

This pic someone posted on another thread always fascinated me.

She used to gush over J.D. Salinger quite a bit in interviews:

[quote]At 20, Ryder still took Catcher in the Rye wherever she went as a kind of adult pacifier. She even wrote Salinger a fan letter, though she never sent it. “I kind of said, um, that I, uh, just how much it meant to me, and thanked him for it,” she told Premiere