Winona Forever?

                    There was a time when Winona Ryder was so hip, it was almost painful. She was everywhere and she was in everything, and we were all in love with her. She had impeccable intuition for choosing roles that were just right, and for a time, it seemed every single one of her performances made history. Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands was a raving cult classic that belonged to an entire generation. Heathers broke through as something so dark and creepy and unlike anything we’d ever seen and we just couldn’t stop talking about it. Reality Bites was a love letter to the 1990’s. Her incredible performances in The Crucible and Girl, Interrupted furthered our devotion (those doe eyes!), and that haircut, that pixie haircut absolutely changed the world. We were all so nuts over Winona that we all might as well have had Johnny Depp’s famous tattoo burned into our flesh. And then, suddenly, she was gone.

                    Why, I ask? I mean, we all know of the shoplifting incident (big deal) and, well, that happened a long time ago, and does anyone even care? Do we really care? As a collective, we are willing to forgive worlds of sins, and celebrities, like all of us, have their “issues.” They get checked in and out of rehab, they drink and get D.U.I.’s, they spend the night in jail, they make sex tapes, they’ve got their drug addictions and their breakdowns, but hey, we forgave Robert Downey, Jr. and invited him back into our world like nothing happened, so what’s this deal with Winona Ryder? Yes, she was in Black Swan last year for about two seconds, and yes, she was wonderful, but where was she before and where has she been since and why isn’t she cast in lead roles and why don’t we love her anymore? I really want to know. This has been bothering me for years.