The Unsaid Truth About Winona Ryder’s Childhood

Winona Ryder opened up about a difficult time at Kenilworth Junior High in Petaluma, California during her middle school years. The “Little Women” star revealed she used to get bullied because she wore men’s baggy clothes and her hair was so short, that she was often mistaken for a boy. “As I went to the bathroom I heard people saying, ‘Hey, f****t’. They slammed my head into a locker. I fell to the ground and they started to kick the s**t out of me,” she said in Nigel Goodall’s book, “Winona Ryder: The Biography “I had to have stitches.”

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Although Ryder had the worst luck with her bullies, she thought things would change for the better and improve her standing with the cool kids after she landed a lead role in the 1988 film “Beetlejuice.” “I remember thinking, ‘Ooh, it’s like the number-one movie. This is going to make things great at school,'” she told Marie Claire UK in 2017. It didn’t. In fact, Ryder revealed that it made life more complicated for her. “They called me a witch.”

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The “Black Swan” actor also admitted in 1990 that the mean girls in her class used to call her names like “weirdo” and “throw Cheetos” at her because of her appearance. However, just like the saying, “What goes around comes around,” Ryder was able to get revenge several years later.