Celebrities | Pop Culture | 90s | 80s
Winona Rider's Style Landed Her In Some Hot Water As A Kid, But She Fought Back In the Best Way
Winona Ryder has been a major star for several decades now. She first got her start in a movie called Lucas that came out in 1986. She was only 14-years-old when she started, and that meant that she was dealing with puberty just like the rest of us.
Ryder has gone on to win awards, gain recognition, and maintain relevance in an increasingly forgetful world, but she is honest about her past. She has admitted that before she was famous she was dealing with a significant amount of bullying because of how she dressed.
She recalled that "a group of boys hit me in the stomach and slammed my head hard into a locker. I think they thought I was a gay boy." She explained that she wore her hair cropped short and often wore boy's clothing because she was obsessed with old gangster movies.
"They were calling me names, calling me a girl, and I was yelling 'But, wait, I am a girl,'" she remembered. The experience was terrible, but that wasn't the only thing that she was bullied for.
Even after Beetlejuice came out and was the number one movie in the country, Ryder still had issues. "I remember thinking, ‘Ooh, [“Beetlejuice”] is like the number-one movie. This is going to make things great at school,' but it made things worse. They called me a witch.”
But Ryder got the last laugh when one of her bullies confronted her years later...
No one wants to encounter their childhood bullies. It's awkward, uncomfortable, and honestly everyone ends up feeling worse. That is, unless you are an A-list celebrity who is the star of award winning shows and movies.
Ryder ran into one of the people who tormented her years later in a coffee shop, and her reaction was everything you have ever wished you could do.
She said, "I went to a coffee shop and I ran into one of the girls who’d kicked me, and she said, ‘Winona, Winona, can I have your autograph?’ And I said, ‘Do you remember me? Remember in seventh grade you beat up that kid?’"
After reminding them of that moment the former bully replied, opening Ryder up to say what she had always wanted to. "She said, ‘Kind of.’ And I said, ‘That was me. Go f— yourself.’”