Hello everyone! I am not Winona, I'm just doing this in her honor.
Winona Ryder was born Winona Horowitz in Winona, Minnesota. Her father's family was originally named 'Tomchin', but they were wrongly assigned the name of the family that they were travelling with when they arrived at Ellis Island, in 1906.
Most of Winona's early childhood was spent in Petaluma, Napa County. The family spent some time in Columbia with Chilean revolutionaries in the mid-70s. They moved to a 300 acre commune in Elk, Mendocino County with seven other families in the late 1970s.
Winona grew up in a ranch commune in Northern California where there was no electricity, however, when Winona was seven, her mother began to run an old movie theater in a nearby barn and would screen movies all day. She allowed Winona to miss school to watch movies with her.
Winona is the Goddaughter of Timothy Leary and her parents were friends of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and once edited a book called "Shaman Woman Mainline Lady" an anthology of writings on the drug experience in literature - this included one piece by Louisa May Alcott.
Winona moved with her parents to Petaluma (near San Francisco) when she was ten and enrolled in acting classes at the American Conservatory Theater.
At 13 she had a video audition to the film Desert Bloom (1986), but didn't get the part. Director David Seltzer, however, spotted her and cast her in Lucas (1986). When telephoned to ask how she'd like to have her name appear on the credits, she suggested Ryder as her father's Mitch Ryder album was playing the background.
Winona serves on the Board of American Indian College Funds.
She owns some of Hollywood's stars most priceless possessions (Louis Armstrong's bongo drums among others). She also has a collection of vintage Hollywood costumes, including Russ Tamblyn's jacket from West Side Story, Leslie Caron's dress from An American in Paris, Claudette Colbert's gown from It Happened One Night, Olivia de Havilland's blouse from Gone With the Wind, and Sandra Dee's bikini from the Tammy movies.
"I still practice Buddhism to a certain extent and I believe in karma."
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