Earlier this week, actress Winona Ryder fell ill on a flight from Los Angeles to the UK and was given priority landing at Heathrow Airport. Now it’s being reported that Ryder was feeling the effects of an unintentional overdose of Xanax and ended up having her stomach pumped.

HOLLYWOOD actress WINONA RYDER was rushed to hospital yesterday after collapsing on a BA jet with a suspected accidental overdose of tranquillisers.

Winona, 37, had her stomach pumped at a West London hospital.

She was discharged last night.

The waif-like star, thought to fear flying, collapsed twice in first class on ten-hour flight 282 from Los Angeles to Heathrow.

It is believed she mistakenly took too many Xanax pills — used to treat anxiety.

One passenger said: “She turned a deathly shade of pale. It was scary.”

The Boeing 747’s captain requested a “priority landing” and touched down 22 minutes early at 11.13am.

Winona, whose film successes include Dracula, was rushed to Hillingdon Hospital where she was checked in under a false name.

[From The Sun]

Xanax has become the prescription drug of choice for many air travelers. The last time I had to take a long flight, I had people coming out of the woodwork offering me some from their private stash. (I didn’t take it- pills make me puke!) And we all know that Winona is no stranger to popping pills. In 1999, Ryder was busted for shoplifting and for possession of prescription medication without a prescription. It sounds like she took a few too many this time. Hopefully, she only pops pills when she’s flying.

Winona is supposed to be appearing in the upcoming “Star Trek” reboot, as well as the Blake Lively/Keanu Reeves vehicle “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.” Glad to see her working again.

Winona Ryder is shown at the Los Angeles premiere of the film “Milk” on Nov. 13. Photocredit:WENN.

We don’t hear much about Winona Ryder anymore. Every since her shoplifting conviction a few years ago the actress has pretty much stayed under the Hollywood radar. She’s shown up to the appropriate events here and there so as not to become totally irrelevant, but she’s certainly not an “it” girl anymore. And though she’s got a few decent sounding movies coming up, it appears Winona seems to think her life has sunk a lot deeper than it has, because she’s indulged in one of the lowest forms of desperation known to womankind: she’s dating Tom Green.

Movie beauty Winona Ryder has found love with Drew Barrymore’s comedian ex-husband Tom Green, according to reports.

The pair was spotted cuddling up at a Hollywood bar last week (13Au08), and pals insist an odd romance is blossoming – just weeks after Ryder split with rocker boyfriend Blake Sennett.

A source tells the National Enquirer, “Winona didn’t waste any time. She and Tom were all over each other, laughing and carrying on.”

Green was married to Barrymore from 2001 to 2002. Ryder has a long list of exes, including Johnny Depp, Christian Slater, Dave Grohl, Dave Pirner and David Duchovny.

[From Contact Music]

Shudder. Dating Tom Green is like declaring to the world, “I have no options left and no faith in myself!” It’s the female equivalent of dating Shauna Sand or Phoebe Price. Actually it’s worse, because those two women are still semi/sorta/barely relevant, whereas I’d bet if you stopped twelve random people on the street no one would even remember who Tom Green was. Winona please. You have oodles of talent. You generally conduct yourself with decorum, the whole stealing-stuff-you- can-afford issue aside. This is lower than crime. This is lower than jail. You’re worth more than this. Steal yourself a better date.

Note by Celebitchy: Credit goes to this week’s National Enquirer for this news, which I don’t doubt. The Enquirer gets a lot of exclusives that have turned out to be spot on.

Here’s Winona leaving the Crown Lounge on the night in question. No that dude is NOT a suddenly better looking Tom Green. I was hopeful too for a minute there. Images thanks to WENN.

Star Magazine is reporting that Winona Ryder, 36, and Keanu Reeves, 43, are having an on-set romance on their film The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.

Sparks are flying between Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves on the set of the drama The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.

Star has learned that the two iconic stars have been spending lots of time in each other’s trailers.

“They are also always hugging on the set,” says a source. “The chemistry is really electric.”

They’ve gotten so close that during a break in filming in Connecticut, Winona, 36, relaxed with Keanu, 43, at his Manhattan pad. Stay tuned!

[From Star Magazine]

The detail that Winona went over to Keanu’s place adds some credence to this story, but Star Magazine always tries to romantically link co-stars. Their breathless stories about on-set romances usually include lines like “they kept kissing after the cameras stopped,” and “they hugged just a little too long, everyone noticed it.” (These are paraphrased from memory, but they’re not far off from the lines Star regularly uses for fake stories. )

It’s possible that this is true – Winona and Keanu are single as far as I know, although the tabloids don’t follow these two much since their popularity seems to have peaked about 10 years ago. Keanu was seen out with an “unknown woman” in early April, but who knows what that was about.

A lot of romances start on set, and maybe they found that they’re kindred spirits. They could be smoking together in Keanu’s trailer or taking turns using his rented hyperbaric chamber. These two don’t seem like the type to go to a popular restaurant to make their romance public, but both of them could use the publicity that would follow. We’ll have to see if anything more comes of this story or if it’s planted firmly in Star’s imagination.

Winona Ryder is shown at Paris Fashion Week on 2/2/08. Keanu Reeves is shown at the Street Kings premiere in Seoul, South Korea on 4/17/08. Thanks to WENN.

The Daily Mail is reporting a story from an only slightly more reliable source, The National Enquirer, which is set to claim in its upcoming issue that convicted shoplifter Winona Ryder was at it again. They say that Ryder was busted leaving a CVS with makeup she hadn’t paid for. (The Daily Mail says it was a “CVC” pharmacy, but I think it’s safe to assume it was a CVS.) When Winona was approached by store security she said she had no idea how the pilfered makeup got in her bag. It sounds like she had paid for some purchases and not others, and maybe it was an honest mistake:

Now in a new incident, according to America’s National Enquirer magazine, the Girl Interrupted star recently set off the security alarm at Hollywood CVC Pharmacy after making several purchases.

According to the publication, when she left the store, she set off an alarm that drew the attention of a security guard.

A store employee is quoted as saying: “Winona had a bag of stuff, but she set off the theft alarm when she left the store.

“When a security guard stopped her, he found make-up she had not paid for.”

And when she was asked about the make-up, Winona answered: “I don’t know how that happened.”

The store employee added: “We took unpaid items back and she left the store.”

Winona’s publicist at first denied the incident took place. But when told a store employee had confirmed it, said she would check with her again.

[From The Daily Mail]

Given that it’s Winona Ryder involved it’s hard to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it could have been one of those situations where you put stuff on the counter and it isn’t scanned right or something. That’s never happened to me, but I’ve gone home with the security tags still attached to clothing I’ve paid for on two separate occasions. Why is it that those blunders seem to favor the store and not the customer?

Winona was caught shoplifting $5,500 worth of goods from a Saks Fifth Avenue in December, 2001, which definitely put a damper on her career. After a high profile trial she was convicted of grand theft and vandalism and was sentenced to three years’ probation and 480 hours of community service. Her probation ended on December, 2005, and her career gradually started picking up again afterwards, but never quite recovered.

Winona Ryder is shown on 6/7/07 at AFI Life Achievement Award honoring Al Pacino, thanks to PRPhotos.

No, not back in Vogue, she’s just on the cover of the magazine of that name. She’s looking cute, despite the completely ugly and overly large bow featured on her dress, and is out promoting her three upcoming movies. She’s also promoting the fact she looks fab-u-lous for thirty-five. Winona tells us about how she feels about her December 2001 arrest.

“Two months prior to that, I broke my arm in two places, and the doctor…was giving me a lot of stuff, and I was taking it at first just to get through the pain,” she told Vogue’s August issue of the run-up to her shoplifting, with the main “stuff” being the painkiller Oxycodone. “And there was this weird point when you don’t know if you are in pain but you’re taking it.

“It isn’t a reckless [state], like you’re out of your head. It’s just confusion.”

It was while she was in this state of confusion that she decided to embark on her ill-fated Beverly Hills shopping trip.

“The attention was what was embarrassing,” she said of negative publicity over her arrest. “It was the December after Sept. 11…So much attention was being paid to me, when we had just been attacked, and there was all this really important news going on.

“I never said a word. I didn’t release a statement. I didn’t do anything. I just waited for it to be over.”

While Ryder admits that what she did was wrong, she “didn’t have this tremendous sense of guilt” about it, “because I hadn’t hurt anyone.”

“Had I physically harmed someone or caused harm to a human being, I think it would have been an entirely different experience.”

E! News

What an amazing way to address your arrest. Wait seven years, make a statement while looking hot, and then proceed with your career. I wish Britney would try this on for size.

I had never heard of Winona Ryder breaking her arm, so I decided to delve a little further, and found this…

When Ryder was arrested for shoplifting at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, she was caught with a painkiller called endocet, in the same drug family as percocet and vicodin. Dr. Clifford Bernstein says they are powerful narcotics. He says, “They’re all in the morphine family.”

Ryder’s defense team has told “CJ” that endocet had been given to Ryder by her doctor for pain from a previously broken arm. But now “CJ has learned that the same drug could provide relief in the way of a reasonable defense on the shoplifting charges.”

Celebrity Justice

Do you really get prescribed morphine related drugs for a broken arm? I guess that’s why her arm didn’t hurt enough to prevent her from hefting a big load of stolen goods out of the store.