The
Best Girl in the World
Stern, April 25 1991
By Jochen Siemens
In America Winona Ryder is already
regarded as the new Liz Taylor, in Germany she is now coming out with
three films at once. STERN-reporter Jochen Siemens met the 19 year old
- and can't forget her.
A tear. It pearls out of her left eye
and runs down her cheek. The girl is standing on the runway and looks
over. With her hand she wipes away the tear. She smiles, tilts her head
back and rolls her eyes towards heaven. Then she boards the small
plane. End. End of a story which began three days ago in a hotel lobby
in the American ski resort Aspen. Three days Winona and I. Three days
that changed our lives.
It was a Saturday when we first met.
Around three o'clock in the afternoon. It was ice-cold outside and the
snow was sparkling on the mountains of Colorado. Champagne-snow, as
it's called here. It glitters like a million diamonds when it covers
the ground and rustles and crunches when somebody walks across it.
So it was this particular Saturday
and Winona was standing in the hotel lobby. Our eyes met for a short
time. We had a date. We wanted to talk about her films. Winona Ryder is
an actress and appears all of three times this spring in the German
movie theaters. As Kim in "Edward Scissorhands", as Charlotte in
"Mermaids" and as the girl Dinky in "Welcome home, Roxy Carmichael". In
America, all three films ran at the same time. Winona Ryder went to bed
one night, and woke up a star. A schoolfriend for every girl and the
first love for every boy. Winona just needs to rush for a second
through the frame and blink her eyes once - immediately she personifies
the feeling of a whole generation. The 19 year-olds.
Those who don't want to be kids
anymore but still aren't allowed to be grown-up. 19 is the most serious
year of all. At 19 you are absolutely convinced to know really
everything better than the grown-ups. 19 year-olds are more honest,
eager and critical than everybody else. Winona is the best 19 year-old
in the world. "The new Liz Taylor", "the new Natalie Wood", as the
American critics proclaimed.
I say, "Noni?" because her best
friends call her that way. And with that everything starts. Winona
jerks "Hello, how are you?" she says. She is very small, her skin is
pale - delicately pale - and the locks of her hair dangle in front of
her eyes. Also, Winona has a bit of a crooked spine. Somehow she looks
like a junkie-brat.
We stand around like teenagers after
school, she with her Chanel bag and I with my plastic bag. Fat
Americans plod between us with their loud ski suits and candy-colored
boots. "Can you ski?" I ask. "No, and you?" she replies. I tell her
that at the STERN everybody skis extremely well, except for me. The
editor, I tell her, was even once a professional skier. "Great," says
Noni.
"Mermaids" will definitely become her
most successful film. It's a film for Sunday evenings. Noni plays
Charlotte, who must cope with her wacky mother, played by Cher. The
mother moves with her two daughters across America, always has a lot of
boyfriends and cooks great stuff like marshmellow-kebabs and
bubble-gum-burgers. Charlotte - Winona - hates all that, and wants to
become a nun. The whole day she fumbles with her rosary, watches
religious films and sings along with the songs. Then, she meets a boy
and suddenly loses her determination to stay a virgin for the rest of
her life. The boy, a simple guy from the country, is bellringer at a
church. Noni has her first sexual encounter with him - great scene - on
the belltower.
"Mermaids" is Winona's picture,
because it plays the whole time on her face like a stage. The nose,
which wrinkles when Noni has to bite into a vanilla steak; the frowns
on her forehead, which are so deep of exasperation when her mother
yells at her; and the big dark eyes, which can heartbreakingly suffer
when Charlotte has to think about sex. In one scene Winona lies for
minutes on her bed and pouts, throws and rolls around all at once. It
looks like she is suffering on behalf of all 19 year-olds for all the
misery in the world. 19 year-olds are that way, they feel responsible
for everything. For the ozone gap, the price of gas, famines and the
bad moods of their mothers. "We can go up" says Noni.
Winona comes from Winona. No joke:
Her parents named her in 1971 after the small town they where living
in. But the Ryders, a young, liberal intellectual couple, soon moved
with small-Noni to California, near San Francisco, because of the
feeling and freedom there. "We lived there with some other families on
120 hectares, no commune, but we did a lot together" says Winona. Her
parents took life very seriously, daddy wrote social essays and mom
shot some documentaries. The whole day they debated and reflected. The
family's best friends were beat-poet Allen Ginsberg and drug-bard
Timothy Leary, who is Noni's godfather. The five of them often sat
together on the porch in the evenings, looked out onto California and
philosophied. Winona became a strange girl, a small brat with short
black hair who didn't care about the boys in school. "Once they beat me
up. Three guys with their fists. They shouted the whole time: Faggot,
faggot. They thought I was a boy. I was bleeding on my head and had to
wear a bandage which was quickly full of blood-stains. I showed that
off proudly throughout the city."
It is difficult to have fun with
Noni, because she takes everything so seriously. "Do you have a
boyfriend?" I ask, although everyone knows that she is going with
teen-star Johnny Depp. "Yes, but I don't want to talk about it. Do you
have a girlfriend?" she asks in return. "Yes, one who loves Chanel and
sometimes drinks canned beer for breakfast" I say. "That's great," says
Winona and grins a little, "Johnny is a fascinating person, I have deep
feelings for him" she tells.
We sit on a big white sofa, wide
apart. One day, she must have been 14 or so, she played at an
off-theater in San Francisco. A friend of her parents saw her and
recommended Noni for an acting school. Then came her first roles in
"Beetlejuice" and "Great Balls of Fire" Roles by chance, because at
that time Winona wasn't known in Hollywood. "I never wanted to do the
typical teen roles, once a teenie always a teenie. When you then become
older you have to play any crap to make a living. Like Molly Ringwald
for instance."
The dogged ambition with which Noni
plunges into every film has caused a bitter sacrifice in 1990. After
shooting three films - Winona sometimes had to act in two films
simultaneously - came the offer to play the daughter in Francis
Coppolas "The Godfather Part III". An offer from heaven. An extremely
tired and nervous Noni drove to Rome, and didn't come out of her room
on the first day of shooting. "I was totally exhausted and ill." A
doctor ordered her to stay in bed and Coppola took his own daughter for
the part. Winona says very seriously "This will definitely never happen
to me again" The oath of a 19 year-old. The day comes to an end and
Noni and I look upon the sparkling snow. She hums a song by the
"Replacements", her favorite band: "Your present age is always the
toughest, everything tugs and pulls on you." I think about the summer.
Then, Noni and I can spend five hours every day together. That's the
time it takes to watch all her three films in a row.
Of course, that story with the tear
and runway and airplane was a little white lie. But good heavens, I've
got to have a dream to hang onto.