Winona Ryder is Elle-UK’s June cover girl (story via People), and the interview is a little wacky. Maybe “wacky” is the wrong word… I guess I’ve always considered Winona a strange bird, and it’s weird hearing her talk about some of the issues she’s had with boys and fame. My view of Winona was formed before all of that shoplifting stuff, and it’s hard to describe how hot, cool, sexy, and “It” Winona was in the mid to late 1990s (to me at least). I don’t really think Winona’s a bad person, she just comes across as screwed up in this interview – screwed up and drowning in self-pity. She talks about her “first real break-up” and how it sucked really hard. She doesn’t say the name “Johnny Depp” but who else could she be talking about?

For the past seven years, Winona Ryder has lived mostly out of the spotlight.

Now, with a role in Star Trek and the release of another movie – The Private Lives of Pippa Lee – opening in Europe soon and in the U.S. in the fall, the actress, 37, is talking about the strain of being in the public eye.

Ryder, who was engaged to Johnny Depp after co-starring with him in 1990’s Edward Scissorhands (they split when she was 19), says one of her first big challenges was dealing heartache during the height of her fame.

“I had just done Dracula and Edward Scissorhands. I had just had my first real break-up, the first heartbreak,” she tells Pippa Lee director Rebecca Miller, who interviewed her for the U.K. edition of Elle, out Wednesday.

“And I think it was really ironic because, like, everybody else just thought I had everything in the world, you know, I had no reason to be depressed, everything was sort of at its peak, but inside I was completely lost.”

“I remember feeling, ‘I can’t complain about anything, because I’m so lucky, I’m so lucky.’ After that I realized I needed to take time off more [regularly].”

These days, Ryder says, she has more balance in her life. In the last five years, she says, “I have really tried to develop a whole life so when I work I can come home to something [else].”

She adds, “I would freak out when I wasn’t working yet I was exhausted, so I had to learn to take care of myself.”

Ryder says she admires Kate Winslet for her ability to have it all. “During the Oscars, I was thinking about how she totally has that thing, she has her family and children and life and she seems really together and solid – and yet she can completely devastate you on the screen.”

Ryder hasn’t lost the edginess that made her the Generation X poster girl. She tells the magazine that she always thought it was “cooler to be interesting than to be pretty” and that, she “never wanted to be beautiful, I never wanted to be a cheerleader.”

[From People]

Oh, Johnny. I think he’s one of those guys who is really difficult to get over. Neither Winona nor Kate Moss seemed to ever be the same after they had a taste of Johnny and his magical age-defying non-existent beer gut. After Johnny, Winona dated Matt Damon and a string of random indie singers/musicians (she was totally doing that before cough, cough copycat Drew Barrymore). I wonder why Winona didn’t quit the industry when she had the shoplifting trial – she obviously thinks she’s so fragile, it’s a wonder she didn’t pull a Greta Garbo. But I am glad she’s having some kind of comeback – she was always a talented, underrated actress. Although I still haven’t forgiven her for Little Women. Winona was the lamest Josephine March ever.

Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp are shown in the header at the Golden Globes in 1994. Credit: Bauergriffinonline. Winona Ryder is shown alone on 5/4/09 and 4/30/09. Credit: WENN.com