Winona ryder quotes

I would love to someday do a play. I did one when I was very young in San Francisco, where I grew up. A girl can dream.

If you're a musician, you can practice your guitar every day and write songs, but when you're an actor, you can't just like burst into a monologue. Your only exercise is when you're in prep or you're working.

I love Texas. Even if I am a little bit famous or a little bit popular... You go to places where you're not and just live like everybody else lives. I'm not crazy about this country in terms of the shape it's in, but I do think there are lots of great pieces to go to. I think I should take advantage of it while this country still exists.

I think it's really important to have a life and have interests outside of this [movie] business, and not rely on this business to validate you as a human being. If you do that, you're really in a dangerous spot.

Scapegoating will go on forever. We need someone to blame - illegal immigrants, single moms, people in prison. We need someone to victimize.

I was always like, "I'm going to be the drunk judge who's like, 'Objection!' 'In chambers!' "

I'm not a drug user myself. I'm too little to take drugs - my body can't take it.

What's awful about being famous and being an actress is when people come up to you and touch you. That's scary, and they just seem to think it's okay to do it, like you're public property.

Dear Diary: My teen angst bullshit now has a body count.

I'd always find the positive in someone.

I have this sense that I didn't really start growing up until my twenties.

It's just people should realize that the celebrity aspect of being an actor is very rarely enjoyable for people like me who would always rather go unnoticed and disappear into the crowd.

The actors that I do know are people who I think have souls, you know?

One of my friends committed suicide when I was in high school, and it's the most tragic thing anybody can go through.

Money doesn't matter on a deeply personal level. It doesn't make you feel any happier. But of course I am very aware that I don't have to worry about earning a living or about those very important practical things that most people have to worry about on a very real level.

I think I really scored with my parents. All of my friends pretty much came from broken homes, and my parents are still together, but not only that, they're still in love and still write together.

Weird people follow you in the streets, you can't sit alone in a restaurant or a cafe and read a book in peace, and I think everybody values those moments of being alone.

Even though 'Heathers' didn't make a lot of money, I really was able to transition into a situation where people thought I could play an attractive role because of it.

I was inspired by lots of people, certainly in acting and in writing and stuff, but I never wanted to be somebody else.

Well, yeah! Now they're considered golden oldies, which is awesome. I was watching Little Women recently, and I didn't want to get up for fear of missing something. And Heathers is like my own Rocky Horror Picture Show; I recite the lines when it's on. It may seem odd, but I think it's because they're really good movies.

It's an indication of how cynical our society has become that any kind of love story with a sad theme is automatically ridiculed as sentimental junk.

I was never strategic really, but back when I was starting out no one cared. In the acting community, box office didn't matter. I really think it was a mistake when they started paying people like $20 million to do a movie because now it's all people think about. Is she worth it? Is he worth it?

You try to get out there and live. I've always had good friends who've been very supportive and help make me feel good and grounded because I've never felt attached to the film industry.

It's weird because I think of movies like Reality Bites or something, where, even though my life was nothing like that, I hadn't done something contemporary for a while, and it's easier. You do try to make something your own.

Most of my wardrobe is vintage, and I've worn dresses to the Oscars that I got for $10.

Certainly with The Crucible, what I love is that every role in that is so crucial.But there's something almost comic. I remember there's that line where she says, "I am 18 and a woman, however single," which killed me every time!

In America, I don't know how much longer the environment is going to exist. I sort of strongly believe that we're in danger.

I don't want to preach, and I don't want to tell people what to do.

No one is banging my door down to be a superhero. I don't know how good I would be. I have low bone density, so I don't know if anyone really wants to put me in a cape and chuck me out a window. But a lot of my friends, who are great actors and who come from film, are doing TV because that's where the opportunities are. For us, it does feel like it's similar to making the movies that we used to make.

I want to be a good person, and a person that people enjoy working with, 'cause I certainly enjoy working with other people.

It's interesting because First Wives Club was the first movie that made a shitload of money that starred all women over a certain age. That was a milestone that made you think, "Oh, things are going to change."

I'm too young to play lawyers. But I've been really lucky because I never got labeled. I never did the John Hughes thing. I did adult movies. I'm not bragging or anything, but I think that I've chosen really good roles. I've played different people and showed that I have a little bit of range.

You look at people like Gena Rowlands, but she had [John] Cassavetes to write these amazing roles for her.

I love books and going to bookstores. My favorite sound is the sound of the needle hitting the record.

I, myself, am strange and unusual.

There's like this great thing that Bette Davis said when someone asked her, "How do you get into Hollywood?" "Take Fountain!"

As an actress, you want to try new things. You don't want to repeat yourself. That becomes more important to you, as you get older.

It would be great if teenagers could make movies. It's sad how some writers think they can write about stuff they don't understand.

I'm quite comfortable looking at myself in movies, probably because I've been doing it for so long, since I was a kid. So I sort of watched myself grow up and go through adolescence, like, basically on camera.

Remember, I'm the kind of kid who used to get stuffed into a locker by school bullies. I've never felt like I'm a big star at any level of my life.

You're lucky if you're in three great movies, or even one great movie. I've been so lucky. But if you rely on the business to dictate whether you're happy, it gets really complicated. You just can't do that. There have been times in my life that I've done that, and I've found it depressing.

The fact that I got into acting at all was kind of fluke-ish. I loved movies, but I can't remember ever really wanting to be an actress, and I certainly didn't imagine ever being in a movie. I think I wanted to be a writer.

When you finally accept that it's OK not to have answers and it's OK not to be perfect, you realize that feeling confused is a normal part of what it is to be a human being.

Actors do these really gross, gun-'em-down movies, and I always wonder why. They're not good movies. And it's like, "Why are you doing them? Aren't you rich enough?"

I had this big complex because I didn't go to college. There was a whole era where I got linked to everybody. People that I had never met. I was like, "How? I'm home alone reading chapter 12 of a book."

One thing you have to have when you act is energy.

I've learned that it's OK to be flawed.

I've read the Bible. I think the Bible's a great book, but it's a novel. It's beautifully written and la-di-da, but people really took it the wrong way.

Break-ups are hard for anybody, but it's particularly tough when it's being documented and you see the person's picture everywhere. Most people don't have that added problem when they break up with someone.

Bette Davis in All About Eve was huge for me. Her acting was staggering.

In high school, I dressed up as every James Bond girl. I was a teenage Pussy Galore.

Looking back - I did have a lot of success and a lot of great opportunities earlier in my career.

I was exhausted and going through a terrible depression.

My father believes that Western religions are death cults, which I agree with.

As an actress, you go where the stories are. I don't really care where it's seen, at this point. I just want to tell good stories and do good roles that I haven't done before.

My dad took me to all the best rock and punk shows when I was growing up and music has always been a part of my life. So I'm very interested in the music scene and I suppose that's why I've ended up going out with musicians. Dave Pirner is still one of my best friends.

You know you're getting older when they're making TV shows, sequels or plays for things that you did. It's very flattering and very humbling, indeed.

Sometimes I'll watch a movie, and it's got some big star in it playing a working-class person, and the character is in a grocery store, and you can kind of tell, from just watching the scene, that this actor doesn't do their own shopping. So you have to have some sense of reality.

A woman who wears high heels is very different, I think, than a woman who wears sandals.

I don't use the Internet, but apparently you can find out everything on it.

When I was young, I was really, really obsessed with Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes. Because my mom was a projectionist in college, she was somehow able to get a real projector. And she had some connections, so she would get real prints, and we'd put up a sheet. The first movies I saw were To Kill a Mockingbird [1962], Gigi [1958], A Woman Under the Influence [1974]. Then when I was old enough to be able to rent movies, I went through a very big Cassavetes phase.

I'm not into wrinkles.

I approached work very seriously. I never went out. I couldn't fathom people who could go out to clubs... But I definitely went through a time where I was just terrified and exhausted and I didn't really understand. Hollywood... It just got to be too much for me.

I love photography and first editions. I have that in my genes. My father was an archivist.

The older you get, the more yourself you can be and the less worried you are about what other people think.

Suddenly you're the mom, or you go from ... You're not an ingénue, you don't want to play an ingénue, but it's like that line in The First Wives Club [1996]: "There are only three ages for women in Hollywood: babe, district attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy."

For a long time, I was almost ashamed of being an actress. I felt like it was a shallow occupation. People would be watching my every move.

All we want is to be treated like human beings, and not to be patronized, or experimented on like guinea pigs.

I remember the whole thing with the word ambition. I was messed up for a while because I associated it with certain people who just want to be famous. I think, for a while, it was kind of a dirty word for women.

I am not a person who can really sit around and think about regrets because with every bad experience that you have, there is weirdly something good that comes from it.

I was mid-sentence when the casting director said, "Listen, kid. You should not be an actress. You are not pretty enough. You should go back to wherever you came from and you should go to school. You don't have it." She was very blunt - I honestly think that she thought she was doing me a favor.

As a character, it's very interesting to play someone who wants to change their life and have him change it.

I was very lucky because Tim Burton really gave me a career. I don't think Hollywood would've known what to do with me. If I hadn't done 'Beetlejuice,' I think I would've just gone back to my school.

I love my job. But all the stuff that comes with it, the thought of being propelled into the limelight again is not something I sit around and fantasize about, certainly. I'd much rather just do my work, and then go home and read my books and watch movies.

A lot of filmmakers and actors say, "It's so important to bring an authenticity to the role," blah, blah, blah. But then it's interesting because you're also trying to be somebody else, and viewers are going to associate you with that, so I don't think it really has an answer.

I thought it was a cool parallel. Being replaced by the young thing. I know that definitely happens in Hollywood. It's harder to find good roles, and suddenly there's new girls. I'm at that age I've been warned my whole life about.

You go through spells where you feel that maybe you're too sensitive for this world. I certainly felt that.

I remember when I was doing Mermaids [1990], I was 16 and they gave me a B12 shot once. My parents weren't there, and when they did come, they freaked out. They were terrified, because of the Judy Garland stories. I know it's just vitamin B, but it did give you a boost.

I'm the type who'd rather not work than work on something I'm not into. I've done that a couple of times, and I feel like I can totally see it in my performance.

You have good days and bad days, and depression's something that, you know, is always with you.

My problems seemed so glamorous to other people, and everyone just thought I was so lucky. But then, I was lucky because my family was really there for me. I think I just felt like I really wanted to hold on to who I was as a person, and try to have as much of a normal life as I could.

That's an aspect of this business which can be very frustrating and aggravating. Most of what is written about you is wrong and so much of what does get printed is often about personal things that you don't want to have other people read about.

I've learned that it's OK to be flawed, that life can be messy, that some days you glide and some days you fall, but most important, that there are no secret answers out there.

I was very depressed after breaking off my engagement with Johnny ten years ago. I was embarrassingly dramatic at the time, but you have to remember I was only 19 years old.

I was so lucky that I got to meet certain people. It came through Roddy McDowall, who had become a photographer and would do these portraits of celebrities. Then he would get another well-known person to write a thing. He photographed me when I was 15 or 16, and he got Jason Robards to write the thing because he was sort of my mentor. And Roddy would invite me to these dinner parties that were insane. Like, Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen O'Hara and people that were just crazy. I still can't really believe that I met them.

I don't believe I am influencing anybody but myself.

I'm very attached to movie theaters and I love going to them. Nothing will ever replace that. It's very romantic and beautiful. I used to want to live inside of one, with a bathtub, a bike and a bed, and just watch movies.

I think it's really important to have a life outside of this [movie] business and just be the best person you can be.

Somehow I was invited to visit with Audrey Hepburn. I had this afternoon with her, and she gave me a couple things. She was so gracious and everything you would think that she would be.

Crazy isn't being broken, or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me, amplified.

A lot of the old movie theaters are closing down now, which is really sad. It's still in the back of my mind.

I'm a really private person. I just love my work. I feel like celebrity has changed so much, in this culture. Ever since they started with those reality shows and people that aren't actors but they're really famous, it's gotten very different from when I started out. So, the idea of ever becoming more than what I had is not really what I want.

I feel my best when I'm happy.

I'm not interested in playing the girl that's just there to make the guy, you know, give him a talking to.

You can't pay enough money to... cure that feeling of being broken and confused.

I remember when I first started being in magazines, I had pretty thin skin. I was this nerd that read books and stayed home and didn't go out.

I've loved making movies. I feel like I've been so lucky because I've gotten to be in movies that are some of my favorites, regardless of my being in them - like 'Heathers.'

I remember being 18, and my first boyfriend said to me, "Unless you're in the room, you don't know if it's true." We were talking about gossip.

It's part of the celebrity process but my life has never been as interesting or as wild as what's been printed about me.

I was regarded as the school freak which further reinforced a lot of inhibitions and doubts I had about myself. I was a shy, frightened teenager for a long time.

In the '80s, I loved the movies of the '70s. Also I remember loving Klute [1971]. I loved Jane Fonda. Actually, I auditioned for the last movie she made before she retired for a while, Stanley and Iris [1990], which Martha Plimpton got.

My parents really instilled this idea in me of being your own person, almost to the extent that I couldn't do wrong. I'd get a bad grade and they'd be like, "No! What you did was great!"

I think it's important to have as much as a normal life and take the time to get perspective because it only helps your work in the long run.

When I met Johnny, I was pure virgin. He changed that. He was my first everything. My first real kiss. My first real boyfriend. My first fiancé. The first guy I had sex with. So he'll always be in my heart. Forever. Kind of funny that word.

People think that they just want movies like Pretty Woman, when really they - at least the ones that I know personally - have been waiting for something that doesn't completely insult them.

I write pretty much every day, but I don't have any desire to publish anything.

I remember realizing, when I did Little Women [1994], that that was the only time girls that age were being written about. It was always boys - from David Copperfield to Lord of the Flies to Holden Caulfield. There were never young women going through adolescence or teen years; there were only little girls.

There's a scene [in the 1990 film Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael] in my bedroom where I start eating Almond Roca. I was so young. It was before I knew the tricks of moviemaking, and I didn't know you shoot a lot of different angles. I gobbled them and didn't realize I had to keep doing it. So I had to eat 64 Almond Roca that day. I got so sick. In the beginning you're like, 'Ooh, that looks good.' But hours later, no.

In retrospect, I think maybe Audrey Hepburn was going to talk to me about doing something for UNICEF. I was so overwhelmed to just even be in her presence and I was very young, but it was really special and unforgettable.

Society makes suicide so romantic. I mean, you watch these TV movies about teen suicide and you want to jump in front of a bus. Because your biggest fantasy is your own funeral. No one will admit to it, but it's true.

You do a movie if it's good and if you want to do it. It doesn't matter if it's small or big or expensive or cheap. If you want to say the words, you're gonna say them. You can't strategize.

I'm 44 years old. So, it's really great to watch younger generations getting their opportunities, and being there to support them in that.

I was not the first choice for Veronica in Heathers. I auditioned and they were like, "Oh, thanks." And I went to the Beverly Center to Macy's and had them do a makeover on me. I went back because I kind of knew that they thought I wasn't pretty enough. They were trying to get Jennifer Connelly.

If something brilliant comes along but I really feel like it's too old for me - that I'm not gonna have the experience it takes - I'm not gonna do it. Even if it's "a big mistake for my career".

I feel like I had to learn how to take care of myself and find out what made me happy aside from just making films.

I try to just pay attention to what I'm feeling. If something is scary to me, then that's sometimes a good sign - although, sometimes it's not.

I grew up in San Francisco. My parents were not hippies; they were writers. They were very active politically, but on the intellectual side, not on the "taking drugs in a field and listening to the Grateful Dead" side.

Focus should be on the art of film, not on the business of film.

Life's short, so if you're going to spend months doing something, it's gotta be pretty special... But I'm very happy to enter my Baby Jane years, and hopefully segue into the Ruth Gordon years.

I was raised to believe that religion is a beautiful thing, but it's fiction.

How I was raised was, there were no rules - nothing like that. If I wanted to take a drug because I was in school and everybody was doing it, I could go to my parents and say, "I really want to try this." And they'd say, "If you do this, O.K., but this is what can happen to you..." They'd say, "Don't get it in the streets, because it could be really bad and make you freak out. Don't take it in a crowded place, because you'll panic."

If I showed you scripts from my first few movies, the descriptions of my characters all said 'the ugly girl'.

My parents are awesome, but they're pretty left-wing.

I often get offered things that are so similar to things that I have done, and life is too short. When you make a film or a show, as you get older, that's a lot of time to be doing something that you're not absolutely invested in or in love with.

Googling yourself is maybe one of the worst things you can do. I did it once, and someone had to talk me off a ledge.