Winona Ryder: 'Bring on ageing and wrinkles- the roles are better'

Masking the ageing process is a full-time job for some film stars. But Winona Ryder has said that she welcomes wrinkles because visible signs of maturity will bring her more interesting roles.

The Age of Innocence star, 41, told Radio Times: “I love getting older. And I was really excited to turn 40. I feel like the older you get, the more yourself you become, and I think the roles, even if they are smaller, are more interesting.”

Recently Ryder has been cast as an ageing ballerina in Black Swan and plays the wife of a mob hitman in her new film, The Iceman. She no longer attracts the leading lady roles but finds the parts she does accept more fulfilling.

“I do look forward to the wrinkles, actually. Really, I won’t mind. I started out so young and part of me always wanted to be older to get those more interesting parts,” said Ryder who made her screen debut at the age of 15. “Now I feel like I have more life experience and I embrace it.”

“Being the ingénue is fun for a while, and if you are lucky you get a couple of years. I feel like I got really lucky because I had a lot longer than that. And part of me never thought that I would still be acting now, so I relish the work. There’s a lot of pressure in Hollywood on women to stay younger looking, which I don’t quite understand.”

Despite her embrace of the ageing process, Ryder’s magazine inquisitor noted that “her face is still remarkably unlined, with porcelain pale skin framed by a mane of dark hair.”

Ryder suffered a career setback when she was convicted of shoplifting and sentenced to three years probation and 480 hours of community service, following an arrest in 2001.

“I’m very close to my family,” the Minnesota-born actress said. “When anybody goes through a difficult time, it’s the friends and family that reach out to you, the ones that call you, the ones who care about you.”

Ryder is about to start filming the BBC drama Turks and Caicos, David Hare’s follow-up to his MI5 thriller, Page Eight. “This is a good time for me,” the actress said. “I really do love getting older.”