Winona Ryder has revealed that her parents were “very wary of Hollywood” throughout her childhood.
The “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” actress, 52, was propelled to global stardom in the late 1980s, but her parents were against the idea of her packing up and moving to Tinseltown at a young age.
Instead, they drove 7 hours from San Francisco to Los Angeles each time she had an audition.
“I couldn’t work if it coincided with school,” Ryder told AnOther Magazine. “My parents — who are just my best friends — were very wary of Hollywood.”
“They associated it with Judy Garland’s tragedy, and we never relocated there,” she added, referring to the late actress’ fatal overdose.
Ryder added that she “had to keep up my grades” to keep going to auditions.
“That turned out to be such a gift, because I knew a lot of kids who did bear that,” she said. “They relocated and were supporting their whole family, and it didn’t turn out so great. I knew a lot of kids who got burnout.”
Ryder said she later heard that she “had this reputation for being really choosy” with acting projects, “when in actuality we just couldn’t afford to go.”
Elsewhere, the “Stranger Things” star said she found fame at an “interesting” moment.
“In the 70s there was this revolution in film but then it’s like they found this formula in the mid-80s in American films, whether it was Rambo or John Hughes, where you’re the kid sister or you’re the daughter. There were girls or there were women,” she said.
“That’s a big reason I wanted to make films like ‘Heathers’ or ‘Little Women’ – because we didn’t have a lot of that adolescent time, in film or literature. Men did. Men had ‘Lord of the Flies’ and Holden Caulfield.”
Her sentiments were echoed by her “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” co-star Jenna Ortega, who revealed that she often turns to Ryder for advice on dealing with fame.
“I’m very grateful to be where I am and she had kind of a similar thing to say,” Ortega, 21, told MTV.
“It was just so nice to speak to someone who actually understood me because … you know, you can turn to your family who loves and supports you, but they don’t know. You know?”
“It was really insightful and opening – and that was definitely one of the things we connected on,” she added.