Born Winona Laura Horowitz in Olmsted County, Minnesota, she was named after the nearby city of Winona. She was given her middle name, Laura, because of her parents' friendship with Aldous Huxley's wife, Laura Huxley. Her mother, Cynthia Palmer (née Istas), is an author, as well as a video producer and editor. Her father, Michael Horowitz, is an author, editor, publisher and antiquarian bookseller. Ryder's mother is a Buddhist and her father is an atheist. Regarding her ancestry, Ryder has described herself as "Jewish", her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia, and relatives of hers died in the Holocaust. Ryder has one sibling, a younger brother, Yuri, an older half-brother, Jubal, and an older half-sister, Sunyata. Ryder's family friends included her godfather, LSD guru Timothy Leary, and beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.In 1978, when Ryder was seven years old, she and her family relocated to Rainbow, a commune near Elk, California, where they lived with seven other families on a 300-acre (1.2 km²) plot of land. As the remote property had no electricity or television sets, Ryder began to devote her time to reading and became an avid fan of J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. She developed an interest in acting after her mother showed her a few movies on a screen in the family barn. At age 10, Ryder and her family moved on again, this time to Petaluma, California. During her first week at the Kenilworth Middle School, she was bullied by a group of her peers who mistook her for an effeminate, scrawny boy. As a result, she ended up being homeschooled that year. In 1983, when Ryder was 12, she enrolled at the American Conservatory Theater in nearby San Francisco, where she took her first acting lessons. Ryder graduated from Petaluma High School with a 4.0 GPA in 1989. She has also revealed that she suffers from aquaphobia due to the trauma caused by an incident in which she nearly drowned at age 12. This caused problems when she had to act in some of the underwater scenes in Alien: Resurrection (1997) and the scenes had to be reshot numerous times.
On December 12, 2001, Ryder was arrested on shoplifting charges in Beverly Hills, California; she stood accused of stealing $5,500 worth of designer clothes and accessories at a Saks Fifth Avenue department store. Los Angeles District Attorney Stephen Cooley produced a team of eight prosecutors. Cooley filed four felony charges against her in what was described by British newspaper The Guardian as a "show-trial". Ryder hired noted celebrity defense attorney Mark Geragos. Negotiations for a plea-bargain failed at the end of summer 2002. As noted by Joel Mowbray from the National Review, the prosecution was not ready to offer the actress what was given to 5,000 other defendants in similar cases, an open door to a no-contest plea on misdemeanor charges. Ryder agreed under signature to pay two Civil Demands, as permitted under California's Statute for Civil Recovery for Shoplifting, from Saks Fifth Avenue that would completely reimburse Saks Fifth Avenue for the stolen and surrendered merchandise while detained in the Security Offices of the Saks Fifth Avenue store, and before she was mirandized and arrested by the Los Angeles Commissioned Police.
During the trial, she was also accused of using drugs without valid prescriptions. Ryder was convicted of grand theft and vandalism, but was acquitted on the third felony charge, burglary. In December 2002, she was sentenced to three years' probation, 480 hours of community service, $3,700 in fines, and $6,355 in restitution to the Saks Fifth Avenue store – and was ordered to attend psychological and drug counseling by the judge. After reviewing Ryder's probation report, Superior Court Judge Elden Fox noted that Ryder served 480 hours of community service and on June 18, 2004, the felonies were reduced to misdemeanors. Ryder remained on probation until December 2005
Quick Info
Born Winona Laura Horowitz
October 29, 1971, Olmsted County, Minnesota, U.S.A.
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