Ryder's unconventional upbringing certainly contributed to the startling intelligence and self-possession behind those wide-set eyes. Born Winona Horowitz to two hippies thoroughly "into the pudding", she grew up surrounded by some of the brightest lights of the counterculture. Timothy Leary was her godfather (her father Michael Horowitz disavows any involvement with the acid guru's 1970 prison breakout, giving full credit to the radical Weathermen), and Allen Ginsberg often dropped by the Mendocino commune where she lived for four years enjoying a life without TV (without electricity!) that turned her onto books. Money was scarce, but love was in abundance. Yet when the family finally settled in Petaluma, California, she discovered that her years "on the bus" set her apart from her peers, and this experience as a "suburban reject" would help inform some of her best work from "Beetlejuice" (1988) to "Girl, Interrupted" (1999). Her parents promptly curtailed the public school experiment and to add spice to her home study program enrolled her in acting classes at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre. ~homemade editing
