Winona Ryder

Born Winona Laura Horowitz, on October 29, 1971, in Winona, Minnesota. Named after the city where she was born, she is the third of four siblings (including one half-brother and one half-sister from her mother's first marriage). Ryder's parents, Michael and Cindy (née Palmer) Horowitz, were hippie intellectuals, and family friends included the likes of beat poet Allen Ginsberg, and counterculture guru Timothy Leary—who was Ryder's godfather. Ryder's family lived briefly in Colombia with Chilean revolutionaries before returning to northern California in 1974. Later, the family moved to a commune in Mendocino, where they lived for four years without television or electricity. They relocated to Petaluma, California in the early 1980s, where Ryder attended school and developed an interest in dramatic arts. At the age of 12, her parents encouraged her to enroll in the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco.