We haven't done a new edition of "A History of..." in so long! So herewith a new episode of our exhaustively researched 100% true* constantly on "hiatus" series... today's subject is Winona Ryder who turned 40 this weekend.
1971 Near Lake Winona in Minnesota an immaculately beautiful girl child "Winona Laura Horowitz" is born to Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowitz. Three wise men, family friends, attend the birth: poet Allen Ginsberg gifts her with angel-headed hispterism and non-conformity (the things she'll say in early interviews!), scifi author Philip K Dick gifts her with the ability to question reality itself (her onscreen eye-rolling will become legendary!), and her godfather LSD guru Timothy Leary will gift her wi ---- so much history to get through! We'd better keep moving.
1978 The Horowitzes move from Minnesota to a ranch commune in California and live with 7 other families so that young "Noni" will not feel alone... utterly alone.
1983 Little Noni nearly drowns and fears water from that point forward. (She will later be frequently to compared to Natalie Wood but not for this reason.) She also takes her first acting class inciting immediate debate among her teachers and class members as to whether or not she has any aptitude for it at all. Their heated arguments will soon spread to critics and moviegoers and rage on ever after. No consensus has ever formed twenty-eight years later. (Early comparisons to Natalie Wood involve her youthful peak, and raven beauty but this, too, applies.)
1986 Winona gets her first film role in Lucas after a failed audition for the director's previous film. This is her entrance into the cinema.
[Historians should remain unobtrusive objective observers but here, we must pause to travel from Noni's history to our own. In this very moment, little Nathaniel sitting in the theater wonders why none of his classmates are this bewitching and what the hell is wrong with Corey Haim for not noticing her perfection and tells everyone "she is going to be a big star!" and ends the movie praying that he can marry her someday when they both grow up! He doesn't know it yet but this makes him an actressexual.]
Noni on the night she met Johnny Depp1988 Beetlejuice gives Noni her first hit and endears her to the Goth community forever. Or at least for the time being. She feels 'so alone... so utterly alone.'
1989 Winona plays her signature part "Veronica Sawyer" in Heathers and immediately thereafter begins to sell the press the loud worrying prophetic notion that she's peaked at 17. Stop it Noni, do not feed the trolls! She also plays the child bride of Dennis Quaid's Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire. She meets 26 year old Johnny Depp at her premiere. He wants her for his own child bride; they're engaged by the following summer.
1990-2012 AFTER THE JUMP
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Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 11:01AM 
Did you hear that Johnny Depp is guesting on Marilyn Manson's new album? They've done a cover of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" which is one of the first two songs (along with Toto's "Rosanna") that I ever understood were actually about screen stars. (I almost typed "actresses" on accident because Warren Beatty is one of the few actors that I respond to in the same heightened way I usually reserve for actresses). For me as a kid that was really exciting to realize, that people wrote songs about stars.. That's probably why one of my favorite Old Hollywood stories as a baby movie buff was how Judy Garland boosted her own nascent fame by reworking the popular song "You Made Me Love You" for Clark Gable at a Hollywood party. It went over so well they put it right into a movie. 
