Starlog, February 1998
ACTRESS ON CALL by Ian Spelling.
As heroic Annalee Call, Winona Ryder experiences the terrors of ALIEN
Resurrection. Winona Ryder was, is and will forever be a science-fiction
nut. "I loved Invaders from Mars. I saw that when I was a little kid.
When the boy sees the knobs on his parents' necks, that turned me on to SF,"
recalls the actress. "Then, I really got into Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit
451. I was also kind of raised on Twilight Zones. Star Wars
was more of a boys' thing."
Then, there was ALIEN.
"I saw the first ALIEN when I was eight or nine," enthuses the
actress. "I actually sat through it twice. My brothers and I hid in the wings
while they cleaned the theater between showings. It remains one of my favorite
movies of all time. It's a completely revolutionary movie because it was the
first SF movie ever made where the woman survives and the woman is the hero.
That was a really big deal. Ripley [Sigourney Weaver] was really the last person
you expected to survive. You think it's going to be Tom Skerritt or one of the
other guys. When Skerritt dies, you think, 'OK, everybody's going to die.' It
just did not enter your mind that the woman would actually survive.
"Then, Ripley goes back to get the cat and blows up the Alien. That was
incredibly exciting for me as a girl who wanted to be an actress and who wanted
to be an actress in an SF movie. Ripley didn't die. Ripley did not get saved by
a guy and get sent back to Eatth. I saw ALIEN about 15 times. I was
obsessed that a woman had kicked ass in a movie. It really had a huge impact on
me, so much so that I still had the poster in my room at home until I was 17 --
and it's still actually there. I moved out at 17. When I go home to my parents'
house, it's still in my room.
Avid Android
Now, of course, Ryder's name figures prominently on the
poster for ALIEN Resurrection, in which she co-stars with her hero,
Weaver. As an avid fan, Ryder looks back at the merits of the first three
ALIEN features. "The first one was great because you didn't see the Alien
a lot," she says. "But you felt it. It was lurking all the time. It also has
this incredible actress and these other wonderful performances. It wasn't just a
bunch of actors screaming and running around. It had really great characters
that you cared about. I consider the first film to be SF and ALIENS to be
an action movie. The second one was more shooting at things, seeing the Aliens.
I enjoyed it, but it wasn't as fun and creepy.
"I wasn't a fan of the third one. I just did not get it. People say, 'Oh,
that's because Ripley died.' I was really upset about that. It took me a long
time to get over it. With all the action in the second one, you at least saw
that Ripley had a soft side. And then, in the third one, it was set in this
weird prison and it had all this religious stuff that I didn't understand. Then,
Ripley had sex with that gross guy. It just didn't seem like Ripley to me. I
hate saying that about ALIEN3 because I love Sigourney and I
know that she's very close to all three films. But it's my personal opinion that
ALIEN3 didn't work."
One day not long ago, Ryder's phone rang. Executives at 20th Century Fox, the
studio for whom she had just finished The Crucible, the studio that owned
the rights to the ALIEN franchise, wanted Ryder to visit with them. They
didn't inform her of why. "When I went in, they said, 'Would you ever consider
doing SF?' I said, 'I love SF, but it's usually so bad and cheesy. The only way
I would do it is if it were something along the lines of ALIEN, but
that's over because Ripley's dead and nobody can replace her,' Ryder remembers.
"And they said, 'Actually, we're bringing her back.' I thought, 'OK.' They said,
'There's a part for you in it.' It was the first time in my life I agreed to do
a film without ever reading a script. I didn't really care if I died in the
first scene. I just wanted to be able to tell my brothers I was in an
ALIEN movie. That's all I wanted. When I read the script [by Joss
Whedon], I thought it was really good. The way Ripley was brought back was
pretty interesting and relevant to what is going on today with cloning. It was
kind of interesting to know we were making this futuristic SF movie, but weren't
too far off from [reality]."
Another key to securing the talents of Ryder, a two-time Oscar nominee whose
credits include Edward Scissorhands, Bram Stoker's Dracula,
Beetlejuice, The Age of Innocence, Reality Bites, Little
Women and How to Make an American Quilt, was that the studio went
with French wunderkind Jean-Pierre Jeunet as Resurrection's director
after Danny Boyle excused himself from the project. Ryder thought the auteur
behind Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children would be perfect
for breathing new life into the ALIEN franchise. "The tradition with the
ALIEN movies is to hire interesting, visionary directors," she notes. "I
was confident that they wouldn't hire some hack action director. When
Jean-Pierre came along, it was just completely ideal. He is alien. He is
completely the weirdest, most incredible, brilliant man. He really is a genius.
"It's like he's from another world. His ideas, his visions are stuff that
I'll never understand, but that I completely admire. I really loved working with
him. Jean-Pierre will never do anything like it has been done before. He's so
completely original and uncompromising. The studio was incredible, because they
gave Jean-Pierre -- this guy from France who has never made an English-language
movie -- a lot of freedom to make his film. I can't tell you how surprised I
was. He created a different world, a new ship, a new everything. Even when we're
running down a corridor, which has been done a million times, he makes it
interesting. He shoots it so it's unique. He's just very original."
On the set, Ryder and Weaver got on fine, but Ryder didn't take the
oppontunity to gush to Weaver about what a fan she was, or to blather on about
Weaver's influence on her. "I didn't bother Sigourney with questions," Ryder
says. "I was much too shy." Instead, she focused on her character, the mechanic
Annalee Call, who turns out to be a sensitive android who's very protective of
Earth and extremely anti-Alien. Ryder, a self-described "98-pound weakling,"
honed her skills to come across as believable. After all, Resurrection
was no period piece, and it demanded a far different kind of performance than
she had been used to delivering.
"Dialogue makes more sense to me in contemporary pieces or period pieces,"
she stresses. "I wanted to see if I could make the technobabble in an
ALIEN film, the stuff that doesn't make sense at all, sound real and
normal coming out of my mouth. I don't know if it worked. I personally love the
movie, but I'm not crazy about myself in it. I kind of stick out as someone who
doesn't really belong there. My role is secondary -- it's Ripley's movie. I
think the thing Call and Ripley have in common is that they both want to be
human. I didn't see their relationship as mother-daughter at all, but they do
grow to really care about each other. So, I would say it's kind of a sister
relationship. The core of the story is Ripley's relationship with the Alien --
I'm there as the sidekick, running around and chasing after her. But I did think
there were a lot of interesting parts about Call. I knew it would be different
and a challenge and I didn't want to die without trying everything as an
actress."
Able Android
The Resurrection experience proved at least as tough
as Ryder expected, particularly the physical aspects of it. Other
Resurrection actors and filmmakers have commented on the grueling
underwater chase sequence, in which a sleek swimming Alien hunts down Ryder,
Weaver, Ron Perlman, Leland Orser and the rest of the cast. The bravura sequence
was filmed in a giant tank, with upside down sets and cold, murky water.
Rehearsals were conducted with masks and oxygen tanks, but such luxuries were
just off camera -- which at times seemed light years away -- after Jeunet called
"Action!"
"It was bad," Ryder remembers. "It was especially bad for me, because I was
probably the most afraid and the whiniest of the bunch. When I was 12, I
technically died drowning. It sounds very dramatic. I was at Dylan Beach in
Northern California and I got caught in the undertow. I was in for a long time
and when they pulled me out, I didn't have a pulse. Then, I coughed up water and
I came back to life. I would cut school to go to the beach, so it was a big
deal. I was with my stoned friends, who were like, 'Ooooh!' and freaking out. I
had never gone back underwater. I would go into water, but never put my head
under. I told the studio that. I said I had this terrible experience and was
really scared. They said, 'Oh, well, we'll get a stunt double. It's no problem.'
I said, 'Well, OK.' I cut my hair off and they couldn't use a Stunt double
because you can see my face the whole time. So, I was pissed and I was scared.
Then, I started training and went two feet underwater. After a few weeks, it got
better."
Better, yes, but not easier. Picture it: Itsy bitsy Ryder deep under water,
with weighted boots, her costume ballooning, surrounded by actors struggling
with their own fears and problems, attempting to act. The Little Mermaid the
star of Mermaids was not. "It was really terrifying," she continues. "The
worst day was when we were down in the pool set, 30 feet deep, and we were
completely drowning. You would look up and see a ceiling, but it wasn't like you
could just swim up and have room up top. You had to find an opening to swim to.
You had to find the light and swim up. Leland would push me up. I would get up
to the top and we would grab this bar. I'm like 'Huh-huh' [heavy breathing], and
this grip says, 'You know, you might not want to hold that, because you could
get electrocuted.' We were like, 'OK, do we drown or do we get electrocuted?'
Those were our choices. It was scary and the water was gross."
In the end, though, Ryder feels it was all worth it. "I think ALIEN
Resurrection is great, I really do," she enthuses. "Watching myself is
always hard, but I think it's an arthouse SF movie. It has a very European feel,
but it has great action and suspense. I love it."
And now it's on to other things. Next on the agenda for Ryder is Girl
Interrupted, a small film about a young college student (Ryder) who survives
a "meek" suicide attempt and is placed in an asylum for four years as a result.
The actress also worked for two weeks on Woody Allen's next, as-yet-untitled
film, in which she shares most of her scenes with Kenneth Branagh.
As the conversation wraps up, Ryder ponders just how far she has come and
what's still out there waiting to be achieved. "I think I'm in a great position.
That's due to the fact that I started out very young and I've never been in any
big blockbusters that were because of me," she says. "The successful movies I've
done were successful because of other people and other reasons. If
Dracula was successful, it wasn't because I was in it, but because it was
Dracula. If Beetlejuice was successful, it wasn't because I was in
it, but because of Tim Burton. I think that has been a big plus for me.
"I was always the girl from Beetlejuice or Heathers or
Mermaids. I was never really an overnight success, which can be really
bad for actors. When that happens, an actor has to follow up that movie with
something equally big. When people approach me on the street, it's a very
familiar thing. It's like they know me. It not like, Oh, my God!' It's like,
'Oh, hey.' I don't feel so threatened. I use Julia Roberts as an example, which
I shouldn't, but I do only because it really happened to her in a huge way. She
was kind of unknown and then she did Pretty Woman. That was real hard on
her. It was a huge movie and she was considered the luckiest girl in Hollywood.
But from that point on, she was a movie star more than an actress, even though
she is an actress. She's good, but it's always about her box office. Is she
over? Is she back? I would hate to be talked about like that.
"What my route has given me is a chance for people to consider me an actress
more than a movie star. Although people have called me a movie star, and that's
great -- it certainly lets me earn more money -- it has been so gradual for me.
I feel that, ideally, I would like to stay right where I am," Winona Ryder says.
"I get offered the movies I want to get offered most of the time. I don't get
bothered that much. I've never had to use a bodyguard. I've never had the
problems that many people have. Many actors you see are huge. They're huge movie
stars and then they go away. But actors work forever, and that's what I want to
be."
