Winona Ryder Once Felt Hollywood Changed for the Worst: ‘It Just Doesn’t Seem Real’
Actor Winona Ryder has played some of the most iconic characters in cinema. But although Hollywood has been good to her, she once felt the film industry was becoming more and more corrupted.
Winona Ryder saw a lot of change in the film industry
According to Ryder, the film industry was in a much different place in her older years than when she first started. She felt that back in the 80s and early 90s, during her rise to fame, there wasn’t much insider information available to the public. But there was a shift somewhere along the way. To Ryder, the film industry was focused more on its business instead of its art. And this worried her.
“I just am so sick of it that, it makes me not want to go see movies when you know everything. How much they cost, how much people are paid, what the story is, the cast, everything. There’s no mystery anymore,” Ryder once told Prairie Miller.
She also confided that she tried chasing what might’ve been more commercial projects, focusing strictly on the money. But doing so only discouraged the Heathers star even more.
“It just doesn’t seem real, it doesn’t seem honest,” Ryder continued saying about Hollywood. “And for me, I just feel like when I look back on my career, I want to look back on performances and work, not, oh that movie made this amount of money. Or that movie tanked, or whatever. It’s really the work that matters. It interesting, because for a little while, I did sort of follow the business end of it, and I drove myself nuts. Like I was not in good shape, because I was thinking about that stuff. That’s why you hire people, to shield you from that. Because all you should be thinking about is your own work, and your own performance.”
Winona Ryder once shared what convinced her to come back to acting
Ryder eventually decided to take a long and much-needed break from acting. At this time in her career, she was involved in a famous shoplifting scandal that made some question her mental state. But she was also going through a bit of a career slump, too. One that started even before her shoplifting, with several of her film projects falling through.
“I remember that there was a Milos Forman movie with an incredible script, but something happened with the funding, and it was just, you know, bad luck. So I did come up against what felt like a wall. And with what happened . . . I was living up in San Francisco and I really needed the time off, which ended up being a couple of years,” she once said on Interview.
In hindsight, Ryder felt the break she took was necessary to recharge herself and rekindle her passion for acting. This came after she explored other interests she had that the Beetlejuice star put on the back burner for a long time.
“There were all of these very interesting paths in life that I could explore—and so I started to do that. And then what happens is that you throw yourself into something else and you say, ‘Oh my god, this other thing is what I want to do,’” she said. “But then some time goes by and, for me, it was this realization that I still loved acting—and that I still wanted to do it. But it was an amazing feeling to know that there were other things out there that were not all about me and all about making movies.”
