Ryder was born in Olmsted County, Minnesota and was named after the nearby city of Winona; her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Romania. Her mother is Cindy Istas and her father is Michael Horowitz. Her father's family was originally named 'Tomchin', however Ryder has stated that they were wrongly assigned the name of the family that they were travelling with when they arrived at Ellis Island, in 1906. She has a younger brother Yuri (named after Yuri Gagarin), an older half-brother Jubal and an older half-sister Sunyata. Notable family friends include her godfather Timothy Leary and beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

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 km˛) plot of land. As the remote property had no electricity or television sets, Ryder took to reading. Her mother did, however, show her some films on a screen in the barn and consequently, she developed an interest in acting.

At the age of 10, Ryder and her family moved on again to Petaluma, California. However, during her first week at the local junior high school she was bullied by a group of thugs who mistook her for an effeminate, scrawny boy. As a result, she ended up being schooled at home that year. Nevertheless, around this time, she started attending the American Conservatory Theater in nearby San Francisco, where she started taking her first acting lessons.

In 1985, Ryder sent a video audition to appear in the film Desert Bloom but she was rejected. However, David Seltzer, a writer and director, soon noticed her and cast her for his 1986 film Lucas in the role of a friend of the main character. When asked how she wanted her name to appear in the credits, she suggested "Ryder" as her surname as a Mitch Ryder album which belonged to her father was playing in the background.

Her next movie was Square Dance (1987) (called "a remarkable debut" by The Los Angeles Times), where her teenage character creates a bridge between two different worlds - a traditional farm in the middle of nowhere and a Big City. The film considered the question of how much of our behavior derives from our genetic background, how much is influenced by society (i.e the nature vs. nurture debate), and what the ethical implications are. These questions were also considered in one of Ryder's later films, The Age of Innocence.

Ryder's breakthrough film is arguably Tim Burton's 1988 film Beetlejuice, in which she played a goth teenager named Lydia who is suffering from depression induced by the extreme consumer worldview her parents represent. Lydia's family move to a haunted house populated by ghosts played by Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin and Michael Keaton and Lydia is the only human with a strong empathy and sympathy towards the ghosts and their situation. The movie went on to become a huge success.

In 1989, Ryder starred in the cult movie Heathers. Although it is now regarded as her best film, her agent initially opposed her taking the role. Her character is opposed to violence as a way to resolve conflicts and is able to express her views by stopping major violent accidents from happening. Again her character struggles, forced to choose between the will of society and her own heart. She resolves the battle by choosing neither and by playing the parties against one another, so she can be left alone to determine the course of her life. In the same year she did Great Balls of Fire, playing the thirteen-year-old bride of Jerry Lee Lewis.

In 1990, Winona played a primary role in another Burton project, Edward Scissorhands, alongside her then-boyfriend Johnny Depp. It is her only movie, other than 2002's Mr. Deeds, in which she had the naturally blonde hair which she has had dyed black since childhood.

She withdrew from her role in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Part III, after feeling exhausted from recent roles — she finished two somewhat related movies Mermaids (film) (with Cher, Christina Ricci, Bob Hoskins and Michael Schoeffling) and Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael (with Jeff Daniels), both shot in 1990 and both stressing the challenge of coming to terms with oneself.

In 1991, she played a taxi driver who wants to become a mechanic (Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth), challenging society's widely accepted gender roles.

In 1992, she starred in the dual roles of Dracula's reincarnated, love interest Mina Harker and Dracula's past lover Princess Elisabeta, in Bram Stoker's Dracula, a project she brought to director Francis Ford Coppola's attention.

The next year she appeared in The Age of Innocence (alongside Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis), a film based on a novel by Edith Wharton and helmed by director Martin Scorsese, whom Ryder considers the best director. She plays a young woman, captured in plots within plots within plots of the society where every sentence pronounced has at least three different meanings. Her surroundings reflect the interpersonal and societal conflicts raging within and around her via many scenic references and multi-layered utterances. Her role in this movie won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as an Academy Award nomination.

Next she starred in How to Make an American Quilt (1995). In this film her character is again forced to choose between the will of the "quilting bee" and her personal desires. This film was followed by Boys, (1996), a film in which self seems to be pitted against the whole world, with love her only true friend and guide. The movie also considered the credibility of different interpretations of reality, a theme she later explored in Lost Souls. She received yet another nomination in 1994 with Little Women, based on the classic novel of the same name.

In the same year she starred in a cult movie, widely -- and simplistically -- hailed by the press as a "portrait of Generation X" - Reality Bites. Her character had to choose between the voice of reason and her heart in the form of two possible lovers, one a generous, somewhat educated if overly earnest executive at an MTV-like network played by Ben Stiller and a free-spirited, caring, if somewhat cynical leader of an alternative band, a character played by Ethan Hawke. She is at the same time struggling with life in a world obsessed with materialism and dismissing those interested in more ethereal or philosophical concerns.

In 1996 she starred in Al Pacino's debut as a director, Looking for Richard, and also in The Crucible with Daniel Day-Lewis (1996), a movie about the Salem witch trials and the hysteria that prompted the deaths of many without trials. The movie was praised by critics but was not commercially successful.

Soon afterward, Ryder accepted a role as a humanoid robot in the 1997 film Alien: Resurrection alongside the Alien series star Sigourney Weaver. Having grown up on the Alien franchise, she signed before having even read a script. Celebrity (1998), her next film, features a reference to a scene from her earlier film Night on Earth - about considering alternative routes in life.

In 1999, she performed in and served as executive producer for Girl, Interrupted, based on the autobiography of Susanna Kaysen. Ryder was deeply attached to the film, considering it her "child of the heart"; she played the Kaysen character, who had a borderline personality disorder and was calm and reserved in contrast to the supporting role enacted by Angelina Jolie of a sociopath full of sexual energy and prone to dramatic episodes. It was Jolie's role that captured the attention of the public and the Academy.

She went on to portray the fragile, beautiful, young, talented and doomed love interest of Richard Gere's character in the 2000 romance Autumn in New York.

In the same year she played a sister (a nun) of a secret society loosely connected to Catholic Church determined to prevent Armageddon - Lost Souls. The character struggles between the world (including the Church) laughing at the supernatural, her own beliefs based on personal experience and uncertainty between seemingly obvious empirical evidence and her doubts in her own sanity, and a questionable ability to reason or even perceive correctly. The movie was not a success, lost in a myriad of others considering the Millennium FUD.

In 2002, Ryder appeared in two films, one a romantic comedy titled Mr. Deeds (alongside Adam Sandler), where she played a cynical reporter for an unscrupulous television program, and the other an episodic role in S1m0ne, in which she depicted a glamorous star who is replaced by a computer simulated actress because of the clandestine machinations of a director (played by Al Pacino).

In 2006, After a long dry spell, Winona appeared in Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly, a futuristic movie based on Philip K. Dick's famous novel. Ryder portrayed Donna Hawthorne also starring are Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr and Woody Harrelson. Live action scenes were transformed with rotoscope software and the film was entirely animated.

Winona will be busy in 2007 with three films due to come out. First up, she will star in the comedy The Darwin Awards, with Joseph Fiennes about a forensic detective (Fiennes) and an insurance claims investigator (Ryder) trekking to investigate a potential Darwin Award winner. From www.darwinawards.com: "The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally kill themselves in really stupid ways." The film is due out sometime in February 2007.

Second, Winona Ryder is reuniting with Daniel Waters, who wrote "Heathers" For the surreal dark comedy Sex and Death 101 (2007). The quirky comedy follows the sexual odysseys of successful businessman Roderick Blank (Simon Baker) who receives a mysterious e-mail on the eve of his wedding, listing all of his past and future sex partners. Convinced that his marriage would deter a mind-blowing future path of bachelorhood, Roderick sets out to find all the listed women and fulfill his destiny of one-night stands. Things take a fatal turn courtesy of (Winona Ryder), who plays intended paramour/femme fatale Death Nell, a woman who enjoys near-fatal trysts with her love partners along with the intent on punishing all men she finds guilty of sex crimes against women. Filming wrapped July 6, 2006, and is set for release in early mid-Spring 2007.

Also In July 2006, Entertainment Weekly reported that Winona Ryder and writer/director Daniel Waters are also working on ideas for a "Heathers" sequel. "We will be doing a sequel to 'Heathers' next," Ryder said. "There's Heathers in the real world! We have to keep going!" She also in a recent interview forEntertainment Weekly was quoted as saying "I don't know how much of the movie is official; it's a ways away. But it takes place in Washington and Christian Slater agreed to come back and make an Obi-Wan-type appearance. It's very funny” Daniel Waters is involved in the sequel. He's writing it, and may also direct.

And last, Ryder also has another comedy in the works, according to the Westchester's Journal News "The Hollywood Reporter" and writer/director of the film, David Wain, Ryder will star in the comedy The Ten, along with Jessica Alba, Amanda Peet, Paul Rudd, Justin Theroux, Famke Janssen, Oliver Platt, and Adam Brody. The film centers around 10 stories, each inspired by one of the Ten Commandments. Local reports state Ryder is shooting her scenes in Brooklyn, N.Y.

On December 12, 2001, Winona Ryder was arrested for shoplifting thousands of dollars' worth of designer clothes and accessories at Saks Fifth Avenue department store in Beverly Hills, California.

Los Angeles District Attorney Stephen Cooley established a team of eight prosecutors to prosecute this case, charging her with four felonies. Ryder hired noted defense attorney Mark Geragos and mounted a defense to fight the charges. Negotiations for a plea bargain failed at the end of summer 2002.

During the trial, she was also accused of using drugs without valid prescriptions; according to a probation report that can be found on The Smoking Gun website, she had up to 37 prescriptions filled by 20 doctors, using six different aliases, in a three-year period. The defense produced the prescriptions for the drugs that the police found in her purse, and the prosecution consequently dropped the charge. Ryder was convicted of grand theft and vandalism, but the jury acquitted her 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 Saks -- and the judge ordered the actress to attend psychological and drug counselling. The charges were eventually reviewed, and the felonies reduced to misdemeanors, on June 18, 2004.