How Guest-Starring On Friends Did More Harm Than Good For Winona Ryder

May 25, 2024

Highlights

Winona Ryder's 2000s career used to be broken through projects like Friends cameo being known as a "lame stunt."
Despite scandal, 2001 robbery conviction, Ryder's comeback in Hollywood started with Black Swan in 2010.
Issue of double requirements in Hollywood, ageism, and lack of roles for female stars affected Ryder in 2000s.

Winona Ryder dominated in the Nineteen Nineties in movies like Girl, Interrupted the place she had a difficult time with Angelina Jolie; The Age of Innocence along intense means actor, Daniel Day-Lewis; and Edward Scissorhands where Ryder fell in love with her ex-fiancé, Johnny Depp. So it most effective made sense when she made a cameo on Friends in April 2001. Unfortunately, it was once referred to as a "lame stunt."

It was once a terrible 12 months for the actress who used to be convicted of grand theft and vandalism in December. But the scandal wasn't the only reason her Hollywood career tanked. As it grew to become out, projects like her Friends appearance did more harm than good for her Twenty first-century act. Here's a closer have a look at Ryder's lifestyles within the 2000s.

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Winona Ryder's 'Friends' Lesbian Kiss With Jennifer Aniston Was A "Lame Stunt"

On April 27, 2001, Entertainment Weekly released a assessment of Ryder's Friends cameo known as, "Why Friends lesbian kiss was a lame stunt." The subtitle learn, "Guest star Winona Ryder deserved better -- and so do fans, says Nicholas Fonseca (writer of the piece)." In the episode, Jennifer Aniston's character Rachel Green reunites along with her sorority sister, Melissa (Ryder), with a faculty buddy whom she kissed all the way through a fraternity birthday celebration.

Rachel then kissed Melissa again to remind her in their fling. Fonseca known as it the "worse" part of it all. He wrote: "What's worse, the kiss — which occurred in the present, not a flashback, because Melissa couldn't remember it at all — immediately sparked old feelings of passion in Ryder's character, a lesbian, who apparently carried a torch for Rachel for years. (Yeah, right. Like any self-respecting lesbian would wear a powder blue power suit.)" But he additionally "digressed," announcing:

" Friends has never been a gay show, so its depictions of homosexuality — or same sex kissing experiments — probably shouldn't be the subject of any doctoral theses."

While Fonseca concept Ryder deserved higher, he stated that the Friends "episode offered a glimmer of hope for Ryder, a two time Oscar nominee who hasn't exactly been blessed at the box office in the past few years." But he suggested her: "Find a good comedic script, girl, and soon you won't have to resort to unnecessary NBC sitcom guest spots to win back our respect." The Mermaids big name won Oscar nominations for her performances in The Age of Innocence (Best Supporting Actress) and Little Women (Best Actress).

Winona Ryder won a celebrity on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2000.

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Winona Ryder Was "Robbing Everything In Sight" Months After Her 'Friends' Cameo

In December 2001, Ryder was convicted of grand robbery and vandalism after shoplifting over $5,000 price of products from a Beverly Hills retailer. She was then sentenced to probation and community carrier. In addition to that, she needed to pay a $3,seven hundred high-quality and $6,355 in restitution to the shop. At that point, she denied the crime, pronouncing she was handiest doing research for a kleptomaniac role.

Her first post-scandal gig came in 2003. She landed a small function in Vincent Gallo's impartial film, Brown Bunny. "I knew she was going to jail, and this will be good for the movie… I would never cast Winona Ryder in a significant role," the director mentioned of the casting selection.

"She was not in great shape at the time, and she was robbing everything in sight," Gallo endured.

He ended up firing Ryder after catching her stealing on the sets. Since then, the Heathers star used to be practically blacklisted from Hollywood. But in 2016, she explained to Porter mag that she did not "just [disappear] in the 2000s." She confessed: "Psychologically, I must have been at a place where I just wanted to stop. I won't get into what happened, but it wasn’t what people think. And it wasn't like the crime of the century!"

She went on to share that the hiatus helped her refocus. "But it allowed me time that I really needed, where I went back to San Francisco and got back into things that... I just had other interests, frankly," she added. "A lot of people had the perception that I just disappeared in the 2000s. And I did, but only from that world [of acting]. I appeared elsewhere, I promise you. I was transformed into doing stuff I really wanted to do – it was a great awakening. It just wasn’t in the public eye."

Here's a timeline of Ryder's Hollywood comeback following her 2001 scandal:

2001	Grand robbery and vandalism conviction
2003	Ryder used to be caught stealing on the set of Brown Bunny
2004	Start of her appearing hiatus
2010	She made her mainstream movie comeback in Black Swan as a stricken, ousted prima ballerina
2016	She used to be solid in Netflix's Stranger Things as Joyce Byers

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Winona Ryder's Shoplifting Wasn't The Only Reason She Vanished From Hollywood

Many people think Ryder was once merely canceled following her 2001 conviction. But in a 2018 article via Forbes, they cited different "grim reasons" similar to "the double-standard of how men and women are treated in Hollywood," consistent with former personnel writer Scott Mendelson. "By the time Ryder returned, she had 'aged out' as a potential love interest," he wrote. "She turned 35 in 2006. Even Anne Hathaway admitted three years ago to losing out on parts (at 32) to 'new' 24-year-old starlets."

"...Who is to say it wouldn't have been the same even absent [Ryder's] criminal transgression?"

Mendelson argued that it "would be less of a problem if Hollywood made starring vehicles for actresses even somewhat on par with the number offered to actors. But that is not remotely true today, and it was even less accurate in the mid-2000s." He additionally famous that "by the time Ryder came back, Hollywood had stopped making or releasing movies like How to Make an American Quilt, Reality Bites and Girl Interrupted."

The author endured: "It's a problem that crushed an entire generation of (to be fair, mostly white) actresses and was part of what led a whole generation to flock to television for meaty roles."

In 2002, Winona Ryder said the Hollywood "business is brutal" the place "leading men were routinely cast with love interests two decades younger."

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