Winona Ryder - The Biography

Backstage at the Dorothy Chandlier Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles, March 1996, Winona Ryder is still shaking from her walk along the red carpet near where the crowds have been gathering since dawn for a place close to their idols on the most important date of Hollywood's glamorous calendar. For the last hour or so, the stars have been arriving for the 69th Annual Academy Awards ceremony. Goldie Hawn had told her how to handle that sort of crowd, 'Turn your head and smile, but don't stop.'

Later Winona could recall how restless she had felt when presenting Bruce Springsteen to the Oscar audience. 'I was a nervous wreck!' she confessed, 'but that only lasted a couple of seconds.' Not even words of assurance from Anjelica Houston could ease her trepidation. 'You look so fabulous,' Anjelica told her. 'You have nothing to be nervous about.' Little more than five minutes later, Winona was crossing the vast Pavilion stage to the microphone centre-stage. 'It's certainly a tremendous honour for me to be here to introduce our next performer,' she paused for a second. 'Because he's a real hero of mine.'

Only miles away on the Twentieth Century Fox studio lot, west of Los Angeles, Winona had been preparing for the filming of her next film, Alien Resurrection, and probably trying not to think too much about the Oscars. If the thought had flitted through her mind at all, it was likely to be with a degree of disappointment. One review after another for her performance in The Crucible had predicted an Oscar nomination. Even the buzz around Hollywood blazed much the same message.