In her first promotional tour for a major film since her 2002 conviction for shoplifting, Winona Ryder giggled her way through the softball questions tossed her way recently at the Four Seasons in L.A.
Ryder, 34, shook like a leaf during the group interview with co-star Keanu Reeves and director Richard Linklater. They were promoting the new film “A Scanner Darkly,” which opens Friday.
Ryder had a perfectly reasonable explanation for seeming a little loopy.
“I haven’t slept yet,” the Minnesota native said softly. “I came from work. I’m working on a film called ‘Sex and Death 101.’ I play Death.”
With that response, which drew laughter from the 50 or so reporters in the room, Ryder seemed to relax. Or maybe it was the good-natured ribbing she got from Reeves, her co-star in 1992’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” about “suffering for her art” when she mentioned how uncomfortable she was in the corsets she wore for that film.
Ryder said that Reeves was one reason she decided to take on her role as his character’s girlfriend in “A Scanner Darkly,” the futuristic tale about the war on drugs in Orange County, Calif. “I’d do anything with him,” she said with a grin. “Darkly” not only reunited her with Reeves, but also with her “1969” co-star, Robert Downey Jr.
Ryder said a fun time was had by all.
“Yes, very much so,” said the two-time Oscar nominee. “… I felt really safe. Keanu helped me especially with this material because it was very challenging. I felt like we were making this movie forever. I don’t know if we’d ever be able to fully grasp it. It’s endless. I was really scared, and he was there. He makes me feel really safe.”
Linklater said he noticed their chemistry immediately.
“With Winona and Keanu, I was just lucky that they would want to be in the movie,” Linklater said. “I felt they were perfect for the parts. You know, you meet with people and talk about it and stuff, and hopefully you engage them on a level, and you’re off to the races with the characters and stuff.”
Another reason why Ryder, who has been toiling in indie land since 1999’s “Girl, Interrupted,” wanted to do “Scanner” was her admiration for Philip K. Dick, who wrote the novel on which the film is based. The sci-fi author once roomed with Ryder’s godfather, Timothy Leary, and was so close to her father that one of Dick’s old jackets still hangs in her dad’s closet.
“I think I read him really early on,” she said. “I never thought there would be an adaptation of ‘A Scanner Darkly,’ but I always hoped that there would be and that maybe I would get a chance to be in it.”
Dick, who wrote the book 29 years ago, clearly was ahead of his time in regard to the damaging effects that drug trafficking and intrusive government surveillance would have on American culture. Coincidentally, Ryder’s shoplifting was caught on film by hidden cameras at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills.
“To me it’s really eerie how relevant [‘Scanner’s’ plot] is politically and socially,” Ryder said. “I’m really happy to be a part of a movie that–aside from just loving the movie as a personal story–I love that Philip K. Dick was really, really on the money when he wrote it.
“It’s amazing what he predicted,” she said. “And to me, and I’m just speaking for me, I think it’s a terrifying time right now in this country and in the world.”
