Winona Ryder Didn’t Know She Was Talking to Tim Burton After Meeting Him for ‘Beetlejuice’

Actor Winona Ryder met with her frequent collaborator and friend Tim Burton to star in their hit 1988 film Beetlejuice. But it took some time before Ryder even realized she was speaking with the director.

Winona Ryder didn’t know that film directors could be like Tim Burton

Ryder hadn’t done too many movies in the film industry before Beetlejuice. Starting out, she was mostly known for Lucas and Square Dance. But she’d been around the film industry enough to have certain expectations of filmmakers, seeing them as caring but rigid authority figures.

But this was until Ryder met with director Tim Burton, who showed her a different type of filmmaker. In an interview with Collider, she recalled meeting someone in a building while waiting for Burton to arrive. She and her newfound acquaintance would have a conversation, with Ryder completely unaware of who this person really was.

“And then, after about 30 minutes, I was like, ‘Do you know when this Tim Burton guy is showing up, ’cause I may be in the wrong building?’ and he was like, ‘Oh, that’s me.’ I had no idea that a director could be so cool in that way. I had only worked with more authoritative directors,” Ryder said.

It turned out the experience The Stranger Things star had on set was just as unique as meeting Burton himself.

“On the set for Beetlejuice, it was before people would go watch on monitors, and directors would be next to the camera. Tim would be watching you, and it was very peripheral while you were trying to be in the moment. And then, the first monitor came, and it was a little TV. I heard, ‘Wait, someone’s in the shot!’ And it was Tim. That’s the first time I’ve told that story,” she said.

Winona Ryder had to beat out several actors to star in ‘Beetlejuice”

Ryder was far from Burton’s first choice to play the emotionally guarded Lydia Deetz. There was a long list of established stars at the time considered for the role. Sarah Jessica Parker, Brooke Shields, Justine Bateman, Molly Ringwald, and Jennifer Connelly were just a few considered for Burton’s 1988 classic. They all reportedly turned down the role, and it eventually came down to Ryder having to compete with Alyssa Milano for Lydia.

 “It was between the two of us, and she actually got the part,” Milano recalled in an interview with HuffPost. “You always wonder what would have happened differently in my life had that worked out, not that I would want it to be any different, but it’s just an interesting thought game.”

The Charmed star was satisfied with how her career turned out. But it wasn’t easy receiving that rejection as a child.

“I was so little,” she reflected. “You just hear, ‘Oh, you didn’t get it. Someone else got it,’ which was hard.”

Meanwhile, Beetlejuice seemed to change Ryder’s life hugely. It led to several more collaborations between herself and Burton like Edward Scissorhands. It also gave Ryder more film opportunities than she’d ever had before.

How Tim Burton felt about working with Winona Ryder again

Burton worked with Ryder again 35 years later for the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. There have been talks of the movie being in development for years, which only became a reality recently. Burton would reunite with many actors from the sequel’s predecessor, including Ryder. And Burton couldn’t help but get choked up over their reunion.

“Working with these people again and seeing them all, it was very emotional for me. Again, just going back to the old same puppets and techniques. It goes back to the good old days,” he told BFI.

Interestingly enough, Burton didn’t look back at his old film to inform the sequel or Ryder’s character.

“When I did this one, I didn’t look at the first movie because it didn’t feel like it would help,” he said. “I treated it just very much as a project where, after 35 years, the anchor for me is what happened to Lydia, what happened to the Deetz family? What happened to the living people? What happens to people we see at one stage in their life, then you see them many years later?”