Winona Ryder's Parents Refused to Move Her to L.A. as a Child Star Because They Were 'Wary of Hollywood'

Winona Ryder's parents were cautious about her child stardom.

Speaking with AnOther Magazine, the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actress, 52, opened up about the beginning of her career, recalling how her parents chose to drive seven hours from San Francisco to Los Angeles each time she had an audition rather than relocate there.

Ryder said working in entertainment beginning at age 13 was something she earned by staying in school and having to "keep up my grades," per her parents' rules.

"I couldn’t work if it coincided with school. My parents — who are just my best friends — were very wary of Hollywood. They associated it with Judy Garland's tragedy, and we never relocated there," said Ryder. "That turned out to be such a gift, because I knew a lot of kids who did bear that."

"They relocated and were supporting their whole family, and it didn’t turn out so great. I knew a lot of kids who got burnout," she added.

One of those auditions — for none other than Beetlejuice, which Ryder said struck her because the script was much more interesting than other roles she had been up for at the time — involved much more than just reading lines for director Tim Burton.

"I remember I made my mom wait in the car because I wanted to do it alone," she told AnOther. "I was waiting in a side office of this Culver City studio when a young guy came in — I figured he was from the art department. We started talking about old movies and Edward Gorey's art, and discovered we had this mutual affinity for the actor Peter Lorre."

"[Then] I was like, 'Do you know when Tim Burton is going to show up?' " she recalled. "He said, 'Oh, that's me.' I had no idea directors could be like this cool young person. I said, 'God, I’m sorry, do you want me to read?' He said, 'No, I want you to do it.' "

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Elsewhere in the interview, the Stranger Things star spoke about why so many roles in the '80s and '90s were coming-of-age stories, telling the outlet she felt compelled to tell stories for girls and women.

"In the '70s there was this revolution in film but then it’s like they found this formula in the mid-'80s in American films, whether it was Rambo or John Hughes, where you’re the kid sister or you’re the daughter," she said.

"There were girls or there were women. That’s a big reason I wanted to make films like Heathers or Little Women — because we didn’t have a lot of that adolescent time, in film or literature. Men did. Men had Lord of the Flies and Holden Caulfield.”

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in theaters Sept. 6.