Winona Ryder: Ryder on the Storm

Long before Tim Burton decided to cast Depp in the title role, he knew that he wanted to work with Ryder again, having directed her in Beetlejuice. The two of them met in London and discussed Scissorhands prior to the script's completion. "Winona's always done these dark roles, and I wanted to see her in a cheerleader outfit," he says drolly, cracking himself up. "Winona is, basically, a great actress. The role in Edward Scissorhands is tricky because she plays a suburban youth who doesn't have very much of an edge. Winona brings a weight and believability that isn't inherent in the role. But she does it very naturally. You don't see Winona working at it. Her process remains invisible. And acting that way requires a great deal of confidence."

Burton's assessment of Ryder is borne out in the upcoming Mermaids. Her performance as Cher's oldest daughter in this film proves, once again, that she's without peer at capturing the confusion of teenaged girls poised on the brink. Charlotte--a Jewish girl who longs to be a nun, a virgin who can't wait to start seducing men--is Ryder's most complex character to date, and she runs through these startling changes so deftly that there's already talk around town that if the film proves popular with the Terms of Endearment audience it's aimed at, Ryder could get an Oscar nomination for it.

Long before Ryder saw the script for Mermaids, she read the book by Patty Dann and still remembers its appeal. "It touches different people in different ways," she says. "Some people think it's about mother/daughter relationships. Other people think it's about what happens when you don't have a father. I think it's about being a teenager and jumping from one obsession to the next and not being able to figure out who you really are and what you really think... You're so... God, I'm looking for a word. What's the word when you jump around? God, I don't know. It's, like, on the tip of my brain. It's driving me crazy. But anyway, you know what I'm saying."

Mermaids had more than its share of troubles getting off the ground, about which Ryder is mum. Cher reportedly went through countless rewrites and three directors (Lasse Hallstrom, Frank Oz, and finalist Richard Benjamin), and Ryder herself was brought in to replace Emily Lloyd. Ryder brushes these matters aside with a wave of her hand, but she does want to talk about working with Cher. "Cher and I were instantly compatible," she says. "We just struck up, like, an instant friendship. We connected real well and I think it comes through in the film. She's very wise, but also very girlish; she taught me how to relax. During the last half of the movie we worked every single day--and since I narrate the film, I had to do a lot of voice-overs, which are difficult to get just right--so it was important for me to relax and keep from, you know, freaking out. Cher calmed me down, and she really comforted me, later, over the whole Godfather thing."

Ah yes, the whole Godfather thing. When Ryder brings up the topic of Godfather III, her teen spontaneity instantly evaporates. Suddenly she's speaking with the deliberateness and cogency of a well-rehearsed defendant in a murder trial.

It's little wonder. The whispered scuttlebutt around town suggests that the official reason that Ryder skipped out on her chance to play Don Corleone's granddaughter--she was too "exhausted" after filming Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael and Mermaids--is not the real story, or the whole story. Ryder rolls her eyes and adopts a look of disgust to dismiss my question about whether she's heard all the rumors about the supposed real reasons. Clearly, yes, she's heard them all: stories that she was pregnant, that she had a nervous breakdown, that drugs were involved, that Johnny was having an affair and making her crazy, that Johnny talked her out of doing Godfather III so that she could appear in Edward Scissorhands. Ryder acknowledges that the two films' ever-changing shooting schedules would, in the end, have made it impossible for her to act in both pictures, but claims that the real explanation for her not making Godfather III is just too simple for most people to accept. "They knew I was really tired before I even arrived in Rome," she says simply. "I got there two days after wrapping Mermaids. I went from the airport to the costumer, then I checked into the hotel and fell asleep. I was so tired that I couldn't get out of bed the next day. Their doctor examined me, and said 'You are suffering from over-exhaustion.'"

Ryder and Depp fled Rome for the domestic tranquility of her Northern California hometown, Petaluma, where Coppola had shot Peggy Sue Got Married back in the days when Ryder was still local lass Noni Horowitz. There, while she rested up at her parents' house, all hell broke loose back in Italy. According to a lengthy report in Vanity Fair, Coppola's stars balked when the filmmaker elected to recast his own daughter, acting neophyte Sofia Coppola, in Winona's role, instead of selecting from such willing replacements as Laura San Giacomo. The set was thrown into chaos, and more than one name player reportedly threatened to quit the movie. Ryder recalls that while she lay in bed halfway 'round the world, sipping hot soup to recuperate, she did indeed overhear talk of lawsuits and career strategies.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5