When Winona Ryder Was Called Ugly By Casting Directors & A ‘Witch’ In School During Her Initial Days In Hollywood

Winona Ryder after starring in the iconic film, Beetlejuice, faced bullying in school and was called a 'freak' by others. Read on!

By
Esita Mallik
- June 12, 2023 | 1:01 PM IST
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Winona Ryder is a popular name in Hollywood and has appeared in some cult classic movies like Beetlejuice, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Little Women and many more. However, the actress had it really harsh during the initial days of her career when she was labelled as not beautiful enough to be an actress by casting directors. Winona once recalled those harsh moments, and even after gaining success, she faced similar criticism. Scroll below to get all the deets.

Winona is receiving a lot of love from the audience for her portrayal as Joyce Byers in the Netflix hit series Stranger Things. Her character is very loving and warm as a result, one of the popular ones too. Earlier, she had been in the news for her affair with Hollywood heartthrob Johnny Depp.

Winona Ryder shared the harsh times of her initial days in Hollywood with Interview, and in doing so, she revealed, “I was in the middle of auditioning, and 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 favour.”

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In another interview with W Magazine, Winona Ryder shared how the roles she had got in the earlier stages of her career were described as unattractive characters. She revealed, “It’d start as ‘She’s not right’. ‘Well, why not?’ ‘She’s just not pretty enough’.” Giving a few examples of how her characters were described on paper, she said, “If I showed you scripts from my first few movies, the descriptions of the characters all said ‘the ugly girl’. Starting with the character I played in Lucas, she was described as homely and unattractive. Beetlejuice was like, ‘Enter Lydia, a freak who looks like an Edward Gorey character’.” Also, her role in Beetlejuice made her get bullied in school.

Winona recalled, “I was going to public school when it came out, and you’d think that maybe the kids would be like, ‘Wow, you are in the number-one movie in America!’ But they were like, ‘You witch, you’re that freak!’ They threw Cheetos and cafeteria food at me.”

For more such throwbacks, stay tuned to Koimoi!

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