Winona Ryder sets sights on working with Toronto writer/director Sarah Polley

By Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press

TORONTO – There’s chatter all over the Internet about a possible “Beetlejuice” sequel, but Winona Ryder is consumed with news that Sarah Polley is tackling a reboot of “Little Women.”

The actress erupts with elation upon hearing that the Toronto-based filmmaker has been writing a fresh big screen adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott novel.

There’s no word yet on a director, but Ryder says she’d love to see Polley get behind the lens. It turns out she is a big fan.

“You have no idea, she is amazing. Oh my God. I don’t know her personally but I’ve been a diehard fan of hers both as an actress and filmmaker,” Ryder says in a recent interview to promote her latest film, “Experimenter,” out Oct. 16 on VOD and iTunes as well as playing in select theatres.

“I wish there was a role for me in it but there really isn’t. Well, I could be Marmee, I suppose. Marmee in the book — the mom — was my age. I’m turning 44.”

Ryder starred in the 1994 film as one of four sisters coming of age in the wake of the U.S. Civil War. Susan Sarandon played Marmee in that film.

So wouldn’t it be weird to appear in a new interpretation decades later? Not if Polley is involved, says Ryder.

“I’d do anything for her,” Ryder declares. “If it was her, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Ryder says her favourite films from the child actress-turned-writer/director include the heartwrenching Alzheimer’s story “Away From Her” and Polley’s intensely personal documentary “Stories We Tell.”

The “Reality Bites” star can claim to be partially Canadian herself, since her left-leaning parents moved to Vancouver years ago when Republican president George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004.

“They were like the only people who actually did that,” she chuckles. “A lot of people threatened (to move) but they did. I couldn’t believe it.”

To their chagrin, Canada elected a Conservative government less than a year and a half later.

“It was so weird because they really didn’t see that coming,” says Ryder.

“When (Democratic U.S. President Barack) Obama got elected I was like, ‘OK, are you coming back now?’ Because we live in San Francisco. But they’d gotten settled.”

Ryder says her parents have taken full advantage of their relative anonymity in Vancouver to score some movie memorabilia.

She chuckles while recalling a stunt in which they used their insider knowledge to win a contest surrounding her 2006 film “A Scanner Darkly.”

“Some radio program was giving away free stuff and my parents called in — they didn’t say they were my parents — with all the right trivia answers and won tickets to the first showing and a bunch of T-shirts.”

As for “Beetlejuice,” Ryder says she knows little about a possible resurrection.

But she says there is a script, her character Lydia is included, and that original director Tim Burton seems keen to revisit the ghostly comedy. But nothing has been confirmed, she stresses.

“In reality I don’t really know,” says Ryder.

“It looks like it’s going to happen but I don’t really know much more.”

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