Winona Ryder subject of new biography

By Chris Samson

Winona Ryder's adopted hometown of Petaluma has a prominent supporting role in a newly published biography of the 27-year-old movie actress.

"Winona Ryder: The Biography" by Nigel Goodall (Seven Hills Books) includes details of Ryder's upbringing in Petaluma; her trouble fitting in at Kenilworth Junior High School; her childhood fear of being kidnapped and how the abduction of Polly Klaas strongly affected her. It tells how she was discovered and made her movie debut at age 13 and her evolution as an actress over a 20-picture screen career.

Author Goodall, who lives in Sussex, England, makes it clear that the 240-page book is not an authorized biography. "Winona Ryder was not interviewed for this book and has in no way cooperated with or participated in its preparation," he states. Ryder's publicist turned down Goodall's request for Ryder's cooperation, saying the actress was much too young to start thinking about a biography.

But Goodall went ahead with the book anyway, painstakingly researching Ryder's life and career by reading hundreds of magazine and newspaper interviews. "She is, I feel, the most significant actress of her generation and certainly the most exciting," he said in an interview. "She is the first American actress since Natalie Wood to successfully maintain a career from adolescence to adulthood in the full glare of the Hollywood spotlight."

The book reads as though it IS an authorized biography written with Ryder's cooperation. By liberally using quotes from other sources, Goodall makes the book read as though he interviewed the actress. Ryder comes across as a very intelligent, talented and sensitive young woman.

"My greatest wish is that the book will reach a readership of people who feel affectionate about Winona," he said. "I set out with the thought that this is such a great story and she is such a great actress, and I have tried not only to tell her story but also offer a sense of the world that she grew up in and the excitement of the world she entered into -- and, of course, its pitfalls."

Ryder was born Oct. 29, 1971 in Winona, Minn., while her parents, Michael Horowitz and Cindy Palmer, were visiting relatives. She and her father chose her new surname after she completed filming her first movie, "Lucas."

The family lived in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury and then in a commune near the Mendocino County coastal town of Elk before settling in Petaluma, where her parents still live.

"It was kind of a hick town," Ryder is quoted as saying. "It was what I wanted, but I had no idea it was going to be so horrible." Goodall describes Petaluma as "a model American community where complete strangers greet each other in the streets, neighbors exchange homemade cookies and get together at Christmas. It's where Winona retreats to between filming, and one of the few places where she escapes the attention of the paparazzi and the tabloid press."

But the Horowitzes were regarded as "the hippie family in town" and the shy Winona was treated as an outcast by most of the kids at school. On her third day at Kenilworth Junior High School she was roughed up by a group of boys who apparently thought she was an effeminate boy. She ended up with fractured ribs and six stitches in her head.

Soon afterward, her parents enrolled her in acting classes in San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater. A talent scout gave her a screen test and soon she was being represented by a Hollywood agency.

Even at 13, Winona already had a very clear picture of what sort of scripts she liked and was not going to jump at the first offer. Her first role was as an offbeat young teenager in "Lucas." Director David Seltzer said "She had the kind of presence I had never seen, an inner life. More than a decade later, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who directed Winona in "Alien Resurrection," one of her latest films, said she has "an instinctual way of working, a rare quality usually found only in children."

Ryder's films have included "Beetlejuice" (1988), "Heathers" (1989), "Great Balls of Fire" (1989), "Edward Scissorhands" (1990), "Mermaids" (1990), "The Age of Innocence" (1993), "Reality Bites" (1994), "Little Women (1994) and "The Crucible" (1996). Ryder's decision to get involved in the Polly Klaas case in 1993 stemmed from her childhood fears of being kidnapped -- fears that were heightened when she and her sister were followed one day while walking in Petaluma. Phone volunteer Joanne Gardner remembers Ryder calling when she heard of the kidnapping and saying, "This is my town. This is my junior high. What can I do? Do you need money?" Ryder helped in the search, answered phones, spoke at Petaluma Junior High and pledged a $200,000 regard for Polly's safe return.

Ryder persuaded Universal Pictures to turn the February 1994 Los Angeles premiere of :"Reality Bites" into a benefit for the Polly Klaas Foundation. She also had enough clout to see that Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" -- Polly's favorite book -- was made into a film, with Winona in the title role and the film dedicated to Polly Klaas.

"I think one of Winona's most important qualities is that she is really authentic in the roles she chooses and the roles she plays," said Goodall. "She is also extraordinarily selective, extraordinarily talented, and in an industry that churns out stereotypes, Winona had always made a virtue of her individuality, or retaining her spirit and remaining herself. And that's why I think she is the most important actress working today."

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