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How Winona Ryder staged her spectacular comeback
Thanks to Stranger Things, season 5, A$AP Rocky’s latest music video and her appearance in the new Balenciaga campaign, actress Winona Ryder is once again in the spotlight. Throwback to an up-and-down career and her striking return to the front stage.
By Alexis Thibault.
Winona Ryder, a cool 1990s icon
Worn-out leather, Dr. Martens, faded denim, slip dresses, chokers and oversized suits… Her very nineties wardrobe draws a silhouette that one can instantly recognize. That of an offbeat protagonist, feeling at ease as an outcast without ever forgetting to be stylish. American actress Winona Horowitz, aka Winona Ryder, 54, came of age at a time when singularity was not yet a marketable pose.
On social media, she is often characterized as “the cool aunt,” the one who green-lights what’s forbidden with a conspiratorial smile and shows off her Golden Globe perched on her bedside table – won for The Age of Innocence in 1994. That image also owes much to her childhood.
The American actress grew up in a small town in Northern California, without electricity or television. The daughter of intellectuals from the counterculture, she grew up surrounded by the words of American poet Allen Ginsberg and the brilliant pro-LSD essayist Timothy Leary, her godfather. That sensibility would run through her entire filmography…
Winona Ryder’s extraordinary journey, from Tim Burton to Martin Scorsese
After her debut in Lucas (1986), Tim Burton’s film Beetlejuice (1988) launched her career. Her character, Lydia Deetz, a goth teenager fascinated by death, instantly became iconic. A year later, Heathers (1989), a razor-sharp black comedy that subverted the teen movie genre, confirmed her rising star status. However, that choice reportedly came at a price… Deemed too scandalous and dark, the role may have closed some doors for her.
Then, came the cult classic Edward Scissorhands (1990), again directed by Tim Burton, in which she falls in love with a disfigured young man with blades for hands. It was followed by Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence (1993), where she introduces emotional disorder into the drawing rooms of 19th-century New York society. Her performance earned her a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Winona Ryder became an actress to be reckoned with. She went on to star in Little Women (1994), which brought her a second Oscar nomination and, at just 23, cemented her status as a star at the height of her craft. She also appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula (1993), in Reality Bites (1994) alongside Ethan Hawke, in Alien: Resurrection (1997), and in Girl, Interrupted (1999) with Angelina Jolie.
A few years later, on December 12th, 2001, she was arrested for shoplifting in Beverly Hills. Her high-profile trial ended in a conviction for theft and vandalism. Winona Ryder, who was in her thirties and going through a hard time back then, left the spotlight, as though sidelined by Hollywood.
From Stranger Things to A$AP Rocky’s music video: Winona Ryder’s comeback
It would take a cult series to get her back into the saddle. The actress chose a pivotal role to make her comeback, that of Joyce Byers, the ever-anxious mother in Stranger Things (2016–2026). Winona Ryder’s presence was not a question of nostalgia, since this era is hungry for weird, slightly unhinged characters.
And the Duffer brothers found the perfect bridge to an unabashedly Spielbergian imagination in the American actress. When the first season of Stranger Things premiered on Netflix in 2016, it became a cultural phenomenon. Winona Ryder was nominated several times at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Four years later, the HBO miniseries The Plot Against America, adapted from Philip Roth’s uchronia, propels her in the United States of the 1940s, during which aviator Charles Lindbergh becomes president and normalizes xenophobia and antisemitism.
In 2024, she added another milestone to her career, starring alongside Jenna Ortega in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to the cult film directed by Tim Burton. Then, in early January 2026, Winona Ryder continued her high-profile comeback with a surprising flourish. She appeared in A$AP Rocky’s music video Punk Rocky as a suburban neighbor bringing over cookies, before being swept up in the musical chaos of a garage band. A cameo alongside Danny Elfman and Thundercat in a visual universe orchestrated by none other than Tim Burton. Her latest venture? Since February 2026, the actress has been the new ambassador of the house of Balenciaga, fronting the “Heart and Body” campaign.
Stranger Things (2016-2026), created by Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer, available on Netflix.
