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LIFE STORIES
The movie premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival in January
1994, before being released later that
year in Australia. It achieved cult
status nearly immediately, tapping
into the Zeitgeist and profoundly
resonating with young adults coming
of age in a new decade that was
grappling with a recession and the
cultural hangover of the greed-is-good
’80s. Coinciding with the explosion of
the grunge music scene, Reality Bites
saw Ryder become the poster girl for
generation X, courtesy of her signature
blend of naivety and deep-rooted
scepticism.
In many ways, Ryder’s Hollywood
ascendancy was something of an
aberration. She might have been
famous but she was never viewed as
a sex symbol. She talked about author
J.D. Salinger in interviews, wore men’s
shoes and chain-smoked Marlboros
while other actresses were discovering
yoga and religiously wearing Armani.
She was a quintessential outsider, who
had somehow captured
the attention of the world.
Nabbing a second
Academy Award
nomination for her role
in Little Women (she had
received her first the year
before, for Best Actress
in a Supporting Role
for 1993’s The Age of
Innocence), Ryder’s career
was at an all-time high.
Yet a string of big-screen
misses followed. Alien:
Resurrection was the
lowest-grossing of the
series. Autumn in New
York with Richard Gere failed to make
an impact. And when she finally
brought her longtime
passion project Girl,
Interrupted to the big
screen, her performance
was eclipsed by that of
co-star Angelina Jolie,
who won an Academy
Award for her role.
Her personal life
was also in the doldrums.
In the wake of her
heartbreak over Depp,
Ryder had dated Soul Asylum’s Dave
Pirner and then Matt Damon, with
the pair sharing a house in LA
before they too split in 2000.
T
he woman in the
surveillance video
is behaving strangely.
Wearing a long camel
coat, her arms laden with
handbags and jumpers, there is a
slightly frenetic quality to the way
she walks around Saks Fifth Avenue’s
Beverly Hills store in 2001. The woman
is obviously Ryder, and she can be seen
loading her arms with designer clothes
but bypasses three separate registers
before heading to the front door.
Her arrest on shoplifting and
illegal drug possession charges in
December 2001 was the tragic
nadir of the ’90s darling. It would
be years before Paris Hilton, Lindsay
Lohan and Britney Spears’ brushes
with the law made a rap sheet and
mugshot par for the celebrity course.
Such was the frenzy around Ryder’s
2002 trial that the jostling press
fractured her elbow in the melee
outside the courthouse.
Sentenced to three years’ probation
and 480 hours of community service,
she returned to her parents’ home
in San Francisco embarrassed and
something of a Hollywood pariah. (In
2013, Ryder revealed that she had been
suffering from depression before the
infamous spree: “I was starting to have
some trouble before that [the arrest].”)
For most of the next decade, Ryder
took a hiatus from Hollywood, which
was partially enforced by her age. “I
went from weirdo teenager to pixie
waif to them not knowing what the
hell to do with me,” she has said. It was
also driven by a need to re-evaluate her
life. “Psychologically, I must have been
at a place where I just wanted to stop.”
While many critics have referred
to Stranger Things as
Ryder’s comeback
journey, the truth is
she had been steadily
amping her on-screen
appearances for several
years. Portraying an
ageing ballerina in
2010’s Black Swan
finally allowed her to
play a woman in her
40s. Parts in small
TV productions followed.
Her personal life also found a
more even keel: she has been dating
US fashion designer Scott Mackinlay
Hahn since 2011.
Then came the role of Joyce Byers.
Critics raved and audiences binged.
Soon, Golden Globes, Emmy and
SAG nominations were flooding in
for the Stranger Things cast.
As ’90s nostalgia continues, so
too does the Ryder-naissance, with
the actress shooting magazine covers,
appearing on chat shows and fronting
award ceremonies. Amid all of this,
it’s reassuring, comforting even, that
her idiosyncratic sense of style – men’s
pants, vintage tees and old blazers –
has not been dulled.
Nor has her intrinsic star quality.
“It is hard to describe [Ryder’s]
on-screen presence. It really is
magic. Some people just have it,
and she does,” says Armstrong.
While we might remember
’90s Ryder with deep affection, she
is enjoying this current chapter far
more. “It feels like there’s been a shift
in my life. I’m finally getting to play
my own age, and it’s liberating.”
FROM LEFT Ryder with Matt Damon at the 57th
Golden Globe Awards in 2000; and at the SAG
Awards in 2017 with Scott Mackinlay Hahn.
The cast of Stranger Things
accepts the award for Best
Ensemble in a Drama Series
at the SAG Awards in 2017.
“[Mentally],
I must have
been at a place
where I just
wanted to stop”
marty
(Marty)
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