A story about Winona Ryder being bullied as a preteen—and her brilliant response years later—has gone viral.
Her personal account was first featured in a biography of the actress by Nigel Goodall, and resurfaced on Twitter thanks to @bleuvaIentine.
In the book, Ryder recalled being singled out on her third day of seventh grade at Petaluma’s Kenilworth Junior High for wearing boys clothes and having short hair – inspired by Bugsy Malone.
“I think they thought I was a gay boy” she recounted.
“They slammed my head into a locker. I fell to the ground and they started to kick the s*** out of me. I had to have stitches.”
Shockingly, her bullies were not disciplined for their actions instead Winona was the one who suffered the ramifications of this experience.
“The school kicked me out, not the bullies,” Ryder explained.
Winona has clearly risen above this horrible experience though as we have just been graced with the second season of the award winning Netflix drama Stranger Things.
However, that doesn’t mean she didn’t take the opportunity to face her bullies again and give them a piece of her mind.
“Years later, I went to a coffee shop and I ran into one of the girls who’d kicked me, and she said, ‘Winona, Winona, can I have your autograph?’” the actress recounted. “And I said, ‘Do you remember me? Remember in seventh grade you beat up that kid?’ And she said, ‘Kind of.’ And I said, ‘That was me. Go f*** yourself.’”
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