Winona Ryder Quotes

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!

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.

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

I'm not into wrinkles.

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

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 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.

I, myself, am strange and unusual.

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.

My parents were great in the sense that they treated me like a human being when I was growing up. They showed me how beautiful things can be and how ugly they can be.

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

What's great is my parents aren't stuck in the '60s. My dad is so into the culture of today.

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

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.

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.

Most actors don't know what they're going to do next, so you get into this thing where you have to force yourself to have another life outside of acting. And then, as soon as you start something in this sort of normal life that you're trying to live, you get a job. So you have this constant struggle because you want to be able to commit to things and to finish things in your life, but then you also want to be able to act.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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!"

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.

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 got to work with Gena Rowlands when I did Night on Earth, and the movie was just you and someone else in a car, you're just hanging out. There's nobody else, just a walkie-talkie. It was a night shoot, and it was only a week or ten days. But it was incredible just being in her presence.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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 don't have anything left to offer in the teen-angst area. I've done it every way I know how.

Bette Davis, she was so brilliant and one of my heroes, but she worked a ton, and then she didn't get All About Eve [1950] until the last minute. Claudette Colbert was supposed to be Margo Channing, but then she broke her back and couldn't do it. That allowed Davis to play her age.

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 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.

It's really good to be able to think about past loves without having a pit in my stomach, or cringing or feeling heart-broken, or like they hate you. Don't you think?

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.

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 definitely believe in legalizing drugs. It does take the mystery away. It takes the money away, so suddenly there are no drug wars. If you're a junkie, you can get help easier.

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

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'm not a big one on - I don't know what to call it - getting all glamorous. I don't really worry about my looks, and I don't worry about getting old. Exterior beauty doesn't mean a lot to me.

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

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.