Winona Ryder Quotes

As an actor, you can certainly, at any moment and at any time, discover 400 people who think you're stupid, fat and ugly.

Let’s face it. Everybody considers you to be a loser.

Being an actor, you always feel like you're swimming upstream. People are going, 'No, they don't like you. They don't like the way you look. They don't like how old you are.'

Acting was not for me. They were saying, you are too beautiful, you are too ugly, you are too plump, too tall, too short. You cannot believe the way you are judged.

I don't think anyone likes anything of mine. At the end of the day, I love it, but just because I love it... I happen to love broccoli, not a lot of people like broccoli. I always question if somebody else is going to love my films.

Everyone thinks I'm showing off when I talk, ridiculous when I'm silent, insolent when I answer, cunning when I have a good idea, lazy when I'm tired, selfish when I eat one bite more than I should.

Everybody says I can't act. They said the same thing about Elizabeth Taylor. And they were wrong. She was great in A Place in the Sun. I'll never get the right part, anything I really want. My looks are against me. They're too specific.

I was frequently told at drama school that I was thinking too much.

I'm sort of coming of age into a different time of acting, and I feel kind of like a kid again. I used to think that I could climb anything, do anything. But I've just been like a skinny white girl my whole life.

I used to be a chemical-engineering student, but I started studying acting, and I went for a cattle call, up against hundreds of people. They tore me down because I was too tall. They said "How tall are you?" "6'5"." "Next."

I don't want to be an actress, because I think that they have to be really pretty, and I'm not.

I'd read an enormous amount but had spent so much time in my own head that I didn't have extensive social skills. Suddenly I was in this world where I was surrounded by these incredibly polished and wealthy kids who had gone to prep schools, and I felt daunted by them. I don't think people were aware of how full of anxiety I was... For a long time I felt like I was living in a place where I shouldn't have been.

I've always been criticized, right from the beginning! Right from the very first day I was born... They said I wasn't right for the part!

I don’t want kids to think it’s okay to drop out of school and get high, and they’ll be famous actors, too.

I didn't think [Ella Enchanted] would get published. Everything I'd written till then had been rejected. If it was published, I thought it might sell a few thousand copies and go out of print. I thought if I was lucky I could write more books and get them published, too. I still pinch myself over the way things have worked out.

I think by default I wanted to be an actor because, on a movie set as a little kid, the only thing that you can do is be an actor. And I was really enthralled by the whole process.

At this point, a lot of people have made their mind up about me one way or another. I'm sure there's a certain segment of writers who won't ever give me the time of day, hate me, don't get me, don't think I'm good, or whatever. I guess that's fine. It's only an opinion. There are other people who do get it, and can be objective. I could be wrong, but a lot of people, except for really young people, have made up their minds one way or the other.

I think it's good when people don't write good things about your work. I mean, what a great compliment it is to be called a charlatan.

He's solid. "You're fractured." He's hopeful. "You're hopeless." He's always there. "You're half there." He's faithful. "You're so not." He's giving. "You're afraid to give." He's honest. "You lie all the time." He's loving. "You don't know how to love.

Schroeder, do you think I'm beautiful?" "I think you're the most beautiful girl the world has ever known..." "You hate me, don't you?

There's moments when I think it's kind of silly and I wish I would've just stayed natural

I did community theater and kids programs at professional theaters and plays at school and voice lessons for seven years. I stopped because it was so time-consuming. But then I realized that I had access to this world where I could go on auditions. And there wasn't too much of an identity crisis when I started acting professionally because I had been acting longer than I had been writing. It didn't feel new.

When I was going into acting, my mom said, "You can't let that faze you. And if it does faze you, if you start getting upset if people say no, that's it - pull the plug."

I think most of us become self-critical as soon as we become self-conscious.

Growing up, I was the weird, theatrical kid who always tried to make people be in my plays. I've always loved comedy, but when it came time to figure out what I was going to go to school for, my parents were like, "Acting?! I don't think so. No." It took me a while to get the courage to pursue it. I had to do it in secret for a little bit, and then when I got married and was out on my own, I went for it.