Winona Ryder Frustrated by Young Actors Not Interested in Movies

Winona Ryder is a cinephile and really wants her younger co-stars to be, too. In recent interviews while promoting her role in Tim Burton’s upcoming sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the Oscar-nominated actor lamented over how some of the young actors she’s worked with in recent years just aren’t interested in watching movies. Be it working with the “Stranger Things” kids or Jenna Ortega on the “Beetlejuice” sequel, Ryder told Esquire she is very much aware that “I’ve gone from being the youngest person on set to being the oldest.”

As the Los Angeles Times noted in a recent profile: “Ryder appreciates getting to interact with the up-and-coming generation of film lovers who remind her of herself, excitedly telling me how her ‘Stranger Things’ co-star Finn Wolfhard is obsessed with Elliott Gould. Still, she gets frustrated when there is a lack of curiosity among her more junior colleagues.”

“I don’t mean to sound so hopeless,” she added to the magazine. “There are a few that are just not interested in movies. Like, the first thing they say is, ‘How long is it?’”

She told told Esquire magazine in a separate interview: “I just think that social media has changed everything, and I know I sound old. I’m very aware of that. And part of me thinks, ‘Gosh, am I like vaudeville at this point?’ Like [elderly lady voice], ‘Hey, kids, turn down the music!’ But I just think there was such an abundance: the history of film, the history of photography, it’s so rich, and there’s so much there, and I don’t mean we should go backwards, but I wish and I hope that the younger generation will study that.”

While Ryder did not call out any of her younger co-stars by name, “Stranger Things” actor Millie Bobby Brown did give a viral interview earlier this year in which she talked about how she doesn’t usually watch movies.

“People come up to me and say, ‘You should definitely watch this movie, it would change your life,’” Brown said at the time. “I’m like, ‘How long do I have to sit there for?’ Because my brain and I don’t even like sitting for my own movies.”

When she hasn’t been out on the promotional trail for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Ryder has been in Atlanta shooting the final season of “Stranger Things.” The series has taken up a decade of her life.

“Ten years! I never thought,” Ryder told Esquire. “[At first] I was like, ‘I don’t want to be doing this when I’m in my fifties!’ It’s nuts, and its extra nuts to be my age. But I love the boys and I love [the actors] Sadie [Sink] and Maya [Hawke]. It’s been really wonderful.”

Ryder fans can check out the actor in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” when it opens in theaters Sept. 6 from Warner Bros.