Stern, 25 April 1991
The Best Girl in the World 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.
