Winona Ryder recalls being sexually harassed in her 20s and 30s

Winona Ryder has opened up about how her experience of being sexually harassed in her late 20s and 30s affected her passion for making movies.

While the actress declined to identify the perpetrators, she explained that the incidents had a profound effect on her personally and professionally. “I had a couple of difficult experiences with a couple of people who were just blatantly sexually harassing me,” Ryder recalled in a new Esquire interview. “It wasn’t an assault. But it was incredibly inappropriate. It was wild. I really understand [what the victims of Harvey Weinstein and others went through].”

Ryder said she was “lucky” the incidents “didn’t happen as much” to her because she was a recognizable actress, having made a name for herself as a teen in films like Beetlejuice and Heathers. Still, she recalled, “I remember this feeling in your mind: You’re negotiating, you’re thinking about what’s going to happen if you say something. You’re working it out while this person is being extremely creepy.”

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Ryder added that she didn’t realize just how jarring those moments were until she recently recounted them to her Beetlejuice Beetlejuice costar Jenna Ortega. “And as I was saying it, I was like, ‘Jesus Christ, that’s really f—ed up,'” she said.

She eventually became accustomed to shutting down unwanted advances. “If someone was being inappropriate or drunkenly hitting on me it was like, ‘Ha ha!‘ You kind of do that. ‘Ha ha!‘” she recalled. “Inappropriate? I dealt with that. But touching me? It felt very invasive.”

The harassment took a serious toll on the actress and her perception of Hollywood. “I think in retrospect, it really soured [her on making movies],” she confessed. “All the great actors always told me that when it stops being amazing, you gotta get out. I really took that to heart.”

In addition to claiming she was harassed, Ryder detailed two alleged incidents she had with disgraced media mogul Harvey Weinstein. The former Miramax executive is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence for raping and sexually assaulting a woman in California in 2013; a retrial for a separate 2020 rape case was also ordered in New York earlier this year. 

Ryder said Miramax blacklisted her until 2005 for “various reasons,” including an incident in which she may have “offended” Weinstein.

A representative for Weinstein did not immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly‘s request for comment.

“The one time I was supposed to have a meeting with [Harvey Weinstein], I went to the Miramax office and I extended my hand and he shook my hand and I sat on the couch and we had a conversation and I left,” she recalled to Esquire. “And [afterwards] I got like screamed at [by an agent]. ‘What the fuck did you do?’ I was like, ‘What?’ Apparently, I offended him because I extended my hand?”

When asked if Weinstein was “expecting something else,” Ryder replied, “I guess.”

The second incident allegedly occurred before their botched meeting on the set of the 1993 film The House of the Spirits. Ryder claimed that Weinstein knocked on her trailer door to inform her that he wanted her to play the lead role in his 1998 adaptation of Jim Cartwright’s play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. 

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, I just saw that in London.’ I was like, ‘You have to cast that girl [from the play], Jane Horrocks. She’s fucking amazing,'” Ryder recalled. “And he got very weird and he left.” (Horrocks later played the part of Little Voice in the adaptation.)

The actress said she thinks Weinstein refused to hire her — and thwarted others from doing so along the way — because she “knew a little bit too much,” adding, “He did not like me.” 

Ryder spent some time out of the spotlight after she was arrested for shoplifting from Saks Fifth Avenue in 2001. She was later sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution and fines, undergo counseling, and perform 480 hours of community service. She has since returned to the screen in recent decades, landing roles in projects like A Scanner Darkly, Black Swan, and the Netflix hit Stranger Things.