With the most relatable of 90s actresses about to be back on the big screen, weve got the ultimate ranking of Winona Ryder characters.
This weekend, Winona Ryders latest film, The Iceman, debuts. Co-starring Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, and James Franco, The Iceman sees Ryder as the wife of a contract killer. Not exactly the most enviable of lives. Which is funny, because throughout the 1990s, Ryder was one of the most aspirational actresses in the business. The special thing about a Winona Ryder performance is that she made you want to BE her, whether it was as Edward Scissorhandss girlfriend, Chers daughter, or Angelina Jolies crazy-house roommate. Weve gone and gathered 15 of Ryders most prominent roles and ranked them in order of how much we wanted to be her in that role. Let us know if you agree!
15. Autumn in New York: The setting certainly seems nice enough. Autumn really is quite lovely in New York City. Of course, its easier to enjoy all that the city has to offer when one isnt slowly dying of a heart tumor. Safe to say, by the end of the movie, no one was dying to be in Winonas shoes. So to speak.
14. Alien: Resurrection: There were just a lot of headaches that came with being Annalee Call in the fourth Alien film. First of all, youre in space, but on a mercenary ship, so its not like its luxurious. Youre dealing with an Ellen Ripley clone, and you just try telling her what to do. Also, it turns out youre an android. Pass.
13. The Crucible: Ryders Abigail Williams is a total pain in the ass in this movie. Its kind of Daniel Day-Lewiss fault for having an ill-advised affair with a younger woman in the first place, but Abigail should be able to own the fact that she was a total nightmare. A nightmare who ends up getting Daniel Day-Lewis hanged. Nobody wants to be that girl.
12. Bram Stokers Dracula: So, okay, yes, Mina Harker ends up becoming a vampire. But before that, shes living quite the lush Victorian life and the object of eternal devotion from both Keanu Reeves and Gary Oldman. Particularly Oldman. He crossed oceans of time to find her! Thatll boost your self-esteem.
11. The Age of Innocence: As the title suggests, these are pretty nice times to be living in. Life as a socialite in idyllic 1870s New York is kind of a dream come true. The hitch is that Daniel Day-Lewis (there he is again) ends up throwing you overboard for Michelle Pfeiffer. You can do better.
10. Star Trek: This seems like an awfully high ranking for what amounted to a cameo, but think about how proud you would be of your awesome son, Spock!
9. Girl, Interrupted: Okay, so, youre crazy. (Actually: are you? Or had you just told a lie and enjoyed it? Or wished you could be a child forever? Maybe you were just a girl ... interrupted.) Either way, youre stuck in an asylum, and confinement is not ideal, even if its confinement under the benevolent thumbs of Whoopi Goldberg and Vanessa Redgrave. The bright side, however, is you get to have these really intense friendships with Angelina Jolie and Brittany Murphy and Clea Duvall.
8. Heathers: Veronica Sawyer got to be so witty and sardonic. Basically, if I could say "Lick it up, baby, lick it up" to somebody -- anybody, really, much less my best friend/worst enemy -- I would be the happiest person ever. But Veronica had a lot of annoying crap to deal with, from clueless high-school administrators to a psychotic boyfriend. You wanted her attitude, just not her life.
7. Edward Scissorhands: Winonas character in this movie is such an idealized girl. Shes not only beautiful and popular but shes also kind and generous and loving and from a good family. We should all be so perfect. The downside is that we will never be with the boy we love, because his razor-sharp hands make him unfit to coexist with regular people.
6. Black Swan: Okay, granted, Beth MacIntyre is a past-her-prime ballerina who is being pushed out the door in order to make room for Natalie Portman. But basically all she does all movie is drink cocktails and make bitchy faces and comments to people younger and more successful than her. Maybe this kind of role hits too close to home, but personally, I would welcome it.
5. How to Make an American Quilt: At heart, Winonas character in this movie is your basic indecisive Berkley grad student. But who wouldnt want to sit in the company of Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft, Alfre Woodard, Kate Nelligan, and Maya Angelou? To learn from their stories and take their advice?
4. Beetlejuice: Okay, here were getting into the hall of fame of aspirational Ryder roles. For an adolescent, Lydia Dietz really had it all. She lived in a fun haunted house where she was the only one who got to see/speak to the ghosts. Her parents seemed exasperated by her, but they let her wear whatever cool gothic costume she wanted. She was, okay, pretty depressed, but she got to be really funny about it. And once she dodged that whole forced-betrothal-to-a-demonic-rascal bullet, she got to float around her house after school, singing Harry Belafonte songs.
3. Little Women: How great was Jo March? She spends her childhood writing plays for her sisters and ends up a professional writer and an early icon for feminism. Yes, her one sister dies and her other sister is a hellacious brat who grows up to look like Samantha Mathis and steal her childhood boyfriend, which is what keeps this role from the Top 2, but Jo is even able to weather all that like a champ.
2. Reality Bites: Even amid a recession and lingering unemployment, oh, how I wanted to be Lelaina Pierce in the mid-90s. Gen-X slackers had such an appeal back then. Even when Lelaina was at her lowest -- on the couch for days, braiding her bangs, repeatedly calling the Miss Cleo hotline, yet to figure out how to abuse her dads gas card -- she was still exactly who you wanted to be. She was cool, she had cool friends (Vicky a
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
With the most relatable of 90s actresses about to be back on the big screen, weve got the ultimate ranking of Winona Ryder characters. 
