Winona Ryder admits she had two awful relationships when she was young adding ‘what was I thinking?’ but feels ‘lucky’ with her current love as the Stranger Things actress talks her new version of Beetlejuice

Winona Ryder has taken the rare step of speaking candidly about her private life.

While posing for the new issue of Harper’s Bazaar magazine, the 52-year-old – born Winona Laura Horowitz – opened up about her remarkable love life.

The ’90s movie queen admitted to two disastrous relationships in the past. She doesn’t name names, but two of her famous boyfriends were Johnny Depp and Matt Damon. She also had romances with David Duchovny, Val Kilmer and Pete Yorn.

But the Stranger Things actress told writer Thessaly La Force that she’s been much happier in recent years with her current boyfriend Scott Mackinlay Hahn, founder of the sustainable organic cotton company Loomstate.

They have been together for 14 years.

And she feels “lucky” to have met such a wonderful man, added the star, who is directing a new version of Tom Burton’s Beetlejuice.

“He’s so amazing. He really is. I’m so lucky,” Ryder said of Scott, with whom she’s often seen at Hollywood events.

Now she reprises her character, Lydia Deetz, for the sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

“I felt sorry for her,” she explained.

Lydia Deetz reminds Ryder of a younger version of herself, she noted:

“I had two disastrous relationships in my 30s. They weren’t bad, but that was before you even thought about Googling someone,” she said.

“When I look back I think, ‘What the hell was I doing?’

‘I was dating the type of person who only tells you after a few weeks that they’re seeing someone else. And then you’re like, “What the f***?”‘

She also shared her heartbreaking diaries.

“You write clearly when you’re depressed or upset,” the Petaluma resident said.

“When I’m really happy, I usually don’t write,” she added.

“I went through it and asked myself, How?” I was obviously trying to deal with…

She said at the time: ‘It was very sad. I was obviously trying to believe the best and give myself grace. But I was taking care of everything but myself.’

She also talked about her meeting with Burton.

“I was sitting there and a man came in with a folder, which I mistook for a courier or something. We started talking about Edward Gorey. About half an hour into this conversation, I felt like I was making a friend, and I asked him, ‘Do you know Tim Burton? This is his office, right?’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s me.’ I didn’t know directors could look like Tim.

“He was 27. I was like, ‘Oh, sh*t. Sorry. Do you want me to read?’ He said no. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, God, did I screw up?’

“I had this fear when I got up to leave, and I was like, ‘Hey man, it was really great meeting you. Good luck, that sounds really awesome.’ I added, ‘If you want, I can come back.’

“But he said he wanted me to do it. That had never happened. I had never been offered a role without a reading or on the spot, ever.”

He said of her, “She probably thought I was some kind of weird stalker,” Burton says. “But I had that effect on people. I didn’t speak very well, so people didn’t understand what I was saying.

“They still don’t, actually. But again, that’s why I feel like we were connected, because I didn’t push her away. She eventually got it and got who I was.”

She also said that she is happy with her success at a young age.

‘I feel incredibly lucky to have had this life. As intense and overwhelming as it was, it is NOTHING compared to what it is now with the internet and social media.

“I just feel so much empathy for people who have sacrificed so much.”

Ryder was photographed by Liv Liberg and styled by Vanessa Reid for Harper’s BAZAAR, August 2024 issue.

The issue will be in stores from July 23, 2024.