Above is a photo of Winona Ryder, 43, and her hot longterm boyfriend, Scott Mackinlay Hahn, a fashion designer who founded the socially conscious clothing line Loomstate. These two have been together for over three years and they’re just a ridiculously good looking couple. I didn’t realize that Winona had a longterm boyfriend but she does and they look sympatico. Maybe it’s the all black clothing coupled with their expressive eyes. They’re like soul eaters.

Ryder has a new interview with Entertainment Tonight in which she’s promoting Experimenter, with Peter Sarsgaard, an account of the Stanley Milgram experiments in the early 1960s*. The film is out October 16th and here’s a link to the trailer. It looks really good.

To ET, Ryder talked about aging and how it’s a relief to play a character her own age. She turns 44 at the end of the month, can you believe it? She implicitly denied having Botox or fillers by saying that she’s afraid of needles but added that she doesn’t judge women who do that. Is she doing lasers or just staying inside whenever the sun is out? Maybe she’s used heavy sunscreen since she was a teenager. That has to be it. Despite how young she continues to look, Ryder isn’t immune to criticism. She said that she can’t win, basically. Some of the things she said about aging struck me as poetic.

On people saying she looks the same as she did 25 years ago
“It’s such a double-edged sword, because, it’s like, I want to be allowed to grow up,” Ryder tells ET, curled up in a black tracksuit — she thought we were going to chat by phone — in a suite at the Crosby Hotel in New York City. She blames the current state of nostalgia on social media, which has resurfaced younger pictures of her. “How do you win? If I don’t look ageless, I look haggard. Or if I look normal or whatever, then they’ll talk about how bad I look…”

Ryder, however, has no interest in plastic surgery. “I don’t judge, but I’m just terrified of needles,” she says.

On why she didn’t get roles playing women her age
“I feel like when you’ve had a lot of success in your teen years and 20s — and I’m not trying to speak for anyone else — but something kind of happens where you are in your 30s and people associate you so much with those other roles,” Ryder says. “So, they don’t really think of you as old enough, even though you are old enough.”

“I feel like I kind of had this thing in my 30s where it was just hard because people were really holding onto this ingénue thing.”

“I wasn’t that anymore and I looked young, you know, and I’m not complaining about that, but I also agreed,” Ryder adds, as she sits wide-eyed on the room’s loveseat. “I wouldn’t buy myself as a district attorney when I was 35 either, even though I could have been one, you know, age-wise.”

On her role in Black Swan
“I’m so grateful to Darren [Aronofsky] for giving me that role,“ Ryder says. “It wasn’t something I pursued, because I didn’t think in a million years I could be a ballerina or anything. But, you know, I really owe him a great debt there.”

On playing a character her age in the HBO miniseries Show Me A Hero
“The way that [director Paul Haggis] shot me was super unflattering but great… Look, we all want to look good and stuff, but I think there is something great about embracing getting older.”

On growing old gracefully
Without referencing the current discussion about ageism in Hollywood, which has led many actresses to speak about being overlooked as they get older, Ryder applauds the likes of Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Juliette Binoche for setting the example for aging gracefully. “You look at a lot of these actresses that are winning Academy Awards, and they’re beautiful,” she says.

The actress even has a special phrase for blushing in honor of Binoche. “Very genuinely, I’d call it Binoche-ing,” she says as she pinches the top of her own cheeks, referencing the French actress’ early 1988 film, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but maybe there’s a new standard of beauty,” Ryder adds.

[From ET Online, headers added]

Without directly saying it, Ryder is saying the new standard of beauty is women aging naturally. She’s right that they can’t win, though. Somehow she’s still looking preternaturally young and I like that she’s not complaining about it at the same time as she’s acknowledging that it’s affected her career.

Ryder recently confirmed that Beetlejuice 2 is in the works! She clarified this week that Seth Myers had cornered her into admitting that and added that she’s not sure when it’s happening. “I don’t know any more than anybody else… I feel bad confirming, because who knows, Burton could do another movie first.” Geena Davis has said she hasn’t heard anything but would be on board too. As for why Ryder would do a Beetlejuice follow up, she said that the film and her other cult classic, Heathers, make her feel nostalgic. “They come on TV and I feel like, ‘Aww.’” Those movies do that for so many of us in her generation.

Photos are from 8-11-15 (print dress) credit: Pacific Coast News and 10-6-15 (black dress) credit: PRphotos. Header photo credit: Getty

*If you took Psychology 101 you’re probably familiar with Milgram, who tested how far people would go to follow orders from authority figures. Milgram told subjects they were administering electric shocks to a participant in another room as punishment for not learning a word task. The shock recipient was complicit in the deception and received no shocks, but play acted as if he was being shocked and was suffering. Surprisingly, 65% of the subjects administered shocks they believed to be up to the maximum 450 volts, even when the victim was pleading to have it stop.