It tracks that Winona Ryder, every goth girl’s ’90s style icon, would be born just two days before Halloween. From Heathers to Edward Scissorhands, Bram Stoker’s Dracula to The Age of Innocence and Stranger Things, the off-kilter and other-worldly characters she’s played onscreen seem totally in tune with her off-duty penchant for black slip dresses, white lace, and a bright red lip.
But before she became the poster girl for her era (earning two Oscar nominations in the process), Ryder was a child star who started acting lessons at 12 and made her screen debut at 14, in the high-school drama Lucas, opposite a young Corey Haim and Charlie Sheen. Two years later, Tim Burton came calling with Beetlejuice and the part of the hollow-eyed, shimmying Lydia Deetz, which swiftly made the actor a household name.
Almost a decade ago now, Ryder came back to claim her goth girl crown with a role in the Netflix epic Stranger Things. Season after season, at premieres and fan events, Ryder kept to her own glamorous, gothic aesthetic; at the Stranger Things 5 premiere in LA, for instance, she wore a striking Yohji Yamamoto spring summer 1998 set—Lydia Deetz all grown up.
In honor of Ryder’s 55th birthday, we present 37 glorious throwback photos from the first two decades of her career, charting her rise from fresh face to Hollywood heavyweight.
