She was named after the Minnesota town where she was born. At a mere 25, Winona has played everything from tremulous teens on the brink of maturity to delicate 19th century romantics. In person , she is all huge eyes and translucent skin, with a body thin as latticework. At five-feet-four and 100 pounds, Ryder complains she has trouble gaining weight.
Ryder's parent, who still live in Petaluma (her father owns Flashback Books, a store that specialises in 60s-era literature, and her mother is a video artist and a filmmaker). Winona was their first child -- born Winona Laura Horowitz on October 29,1971. There is an older half sister, Sunyata, and half brother, Jubal, from her mother's first marriage. A brother, Yuri , followed five years after Winona. Winona exchanged the name Horowitz for Ryder when she was 15.
She remains close to her family (her father's pasta remains her favorite food) and is busy concentrating on her next movie, Alien: Resurrection with Sigourney Weaver ("It's really cool, a great script"), for which she cross-trained six hours a day to build muscles.