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.
Winona RyderI 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.
Winona RyderYou'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.
Winona RyderThere was a time when I was 19 when I really, really, really thought I was going crazy. I was exhausted and going through a terrible depression.
Winona RyderI 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.
Winona RyderI 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.
Winona Ryder