Winona Ryder — actress with roots in the Russian Empire
Winona Ryder was born Winona Laura Horowitz in Winona County, Minnesota, in October 1971, to Michael D. Horowitz, an author, editor and antiquarian bookseller, and Cynthia Palmer, a writer and video producer. She was named after the county. Her brother was named Urie, after Yuri Gagarin.
Her father's family was Ashkenazi Jewish, with roots in Russia, Ukraine and Romania; her mother's side was Irish. The family went to Brooklyn every year to spend Passover with her paternal grandparents. The Russian and Ukrainian strands of that ancestry were inside the Russian Empire when the family left; the Romanian strand was not, and is recorded here separately rather than folded in, since Romania was an independent kingdom from 1878 and was never imperial territory.
She made her film debut in Lucas in 1986 and was famous within two years, through Beetlejuice and Heathers, then Edward Scissorhands, Mermaids and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Consecutive Academy Award nominations followed for The Age of Innocence in 1993, which brought her the Golden Globe, and Little Women in 1994. She was, for most of a decade, the defining young American screen actress of her generation.
The late 1990s and early 2000s were difficult, publicly and professionally, and she has since spoken about that period at length and without much self-protection. The return was gradual - Girl, Interrupted, A Scanner Darkly, Black Swan, The Iceman - and then abrupt, when Stranger Things began in 2016 and ran for nearly a decade, giving her a second defining role thirty years after the first.
She has been consistently direct about the Jewish inheritance, and unusually willing to name antisemitism in the industry when she has encountered it. She narrated Anne Frank's diary for an audio edition and has worked on Holocaust education projects.
"Paternal family emigrated from Russia, Ukraine and Romania in the early twentieth century"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Russia / Ukraine
She was named after Winona County, Minnesota, where she was born; her brother was named Urie, after Yuri Gagarin. The family kept Passover with her paternal grandparents in Brooklyn each year.
Her father Michael D. Horowitz came from an Ashkenazi Jewish family with roots in Russia, Ukraine and Romania. The Russian and Ukrainian strands were inside the Russian Empire; Romania was not, and is recorded separately. No single emigrant ancestor or town has been established.
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Russia / Ukraine. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.