Winona Ryder @ 50: Little Women
Thursday, October 28, 2021 at 1:02PM We're celebrating Winona Ryder for her birthday this week
by Lynn Lee
Was Winona Ryder miscast in Little Women? Boy, was she ever. Or so I thought back in 1994 when I first heard she was playing Jo, second of the four March sisters, in the then-new film adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott classic. As a teenager who’d read Little Women so many times it had become personal canon, I found the casting ludicrous on its face. After all, in the book Jo is lanky, tomboyish, awkward, and plain. Ryder, by contrast, was tiny, graceful, and so exquisitely pretty I had a bit of a crush on her, a fact that sharpened rather than softened my disapproval. Still, in the end curiosity and my family’s tradition of going to see a movie on Christmas meant I got to judge for myself just how wrong she was for the role.
Readers, what can I say? She completely won me over....
10|25|50|75|100, 1994, Adaptations, Best Actress, Little Women, Oscars (90s), Winona Ryder, books