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At school. her androgynous hairstyle caused more serious repercussions when she was bullied and mistaken for a gay boy. ‘I was just walking down the school hall and they started calling me names.’ she says of one attack. ‘I got six stitches in my head. was slammed into a locker. got a fractured rib.’
Maybe this will begin her mind when she takes on her first action role — alongside Sigourney Weaver in Alien Resurrection — although she has already said that the six hours a day training didn‘t quite suit her 5ft
Ryder was once arrested for shoplifting a comic book. When the police took her home handcuffed, her parents allegedly tried to beat up the arresting officers.
4in. l()()lbs frame: ‘I just don't have that type of body. I‘m really small. I have a weird metabolism. Muscles look strange on me.’
Before then comes The Crucible. a film version of Arthur Miller‘s classic play about the Salem witch trials in which Ryder plays Abigail Williams. the young woman who turns to accusations of witchcraft when spurned by her married lover. Most classroom readings of the play have Abigail as a misguided. spiteful girl and the noble John Proctor as hero. but Ryder has a different viewpoint.
‘I found a lot more sympathy for Abigail than I thought I‘d find.‘ she recently told Buzz. magazine. ‘ln reality. Abigail was twelve and John Proctor was 65. He’s been fucking her since she was a little girl and all of a sudden she’s kicked out and he says. “Nothing happened. we never touched". And she is left saying. “But wait; we did, and you said you loved me. and you said you were going to be with me". To me that’s so incredibly abusive and sick and warped.’
Strong words. Even after more than a decade in the business, the grown-up Winona Ryder can bring an alternative, outsider’s take to the most familiar material.
The Crucible opens on Fri 28 Feb.
THE ORUOIBLE
The Miller’s Tale
In 1952, America’s most happening playwright took a trip from his home in Connecticut up north to Massachusetts. Then aged 37, Arthur Miller had already won a Pulitzer Prize for Death OfA Salesman, his powerful critique of the American Dream.
But all was not rosy. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee was brutalising the arts and showbusiness in its ruthless bid to purge America of communism. In Salem, Massachusetts, Miller found 260-year-old court records of a scourge of similar intensity — a witch-hunt in which nineteen members of a Puritan community were hanged. Miller dramatised the events in The Crucible, arguably the most politically charged play of his career.
'There is a certain difference between the occasion for a play and the theme of a play,‘ says 81-year-old Miller, who still lives in Roxbury, Connecticut — roughly midway between New York and Salem. ’The occasion of a play can be a passing event, but the theme had better be more substantial and profound if the thing is going to last beyond its moment. You don’t have to have any consciousness of the conditions around the McCarthy period to watch The Crucible. Finally, the play is self-contained. It's what’s in it; not what it's referring to.’
The Crucible's survival suggests that it resonates beyond the climate of the day; but the paranoid authorities were not slow to read its immediate theme. After its New York premiere in 1953, Miller found himself under suspicion. His passport was confiscated for several years, and when he refused to testify against fellow writers in 1956, he was almost jailed. For many years, a film version was out of the question, yet Miller felt it deserved cinematic treatment. A French version appeared in 1957; and the play was filmed for television in Britain in the 805; but when the opportunity to make a major movie arose, Miller swallowed his concerns about Hollywood's commercialism and started work on a screenplay. "
British director Nicholas Hytner, whose 1995 film debut The Madness Of King George received four Oscar nominations, was astonished at Miller's willingness to re-write his stage classic: ‘I felt as if I was asking Shakespeare for amendments to King Lear.’
Miller is unmoved by such considerations. ’I had to start from scratch,’ he growls, his Noo Yawk drone unsoftened by years in the country. ’I didn't want to do a photographed play, which is very boring. I wanted a film that was really a film. They're two different forms completely . . . The one is using words to carry the story and the other is using images and that's a real big difference.’
Much encouragement came from Miller’s film producer son, Robert A. Miller. 'His contribution was terrific, because he persisted in believing that it could be done,’ says Miller Snr.
The family connections don’t end there. Miller, who was married to Marilyn Monroe for five years, is now related by marriage to Daniel Day Lewis, who plays The Crucible's flawed hero John Proctor. Day Lewis married Miller’s daughter Rebecca last November after ditching Isabelle Adjani, mother of his son, allegedly by fax.
'He's a wonderful guy,’ boasts Miller of his son-in-law, who lived alone in the woods for two months prior to shooting - part of his typically extreme actorly preparations. 'He's a very interesting fellow and he’s a good friend now.’
The Crucible’s opening coincides with the arrival of Death Of A Salesman in Edinburgh. The Royal National Theatre's touring production allows an opportunity to compare versions of Miller’s two best-known plays. He disputes the suggestion that his more recent work is neglected by comparison - ’T hose other plays have established themselves over a long period of time,’ he says. But is he happy that the world is still fascinated by work now almost 50 years old? ;
'Oh certainly,’ he replies. ‘It’s ‘ a great satisfaction.’ (Andrew “ Burnet) ‘ " I Death Of A Salesman is at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, Tue 4—Sat 8 Mar. See also page 61.
is a very interesting fellow'
21 Feb—6 Mar 1997 TIIEU81'9