Thursday, January 8, 2009

Profiles of America's Beloved TV Celebrities (17) - Winona Ryder & the CIA, Drugs, Thievery, Bad Company & an Overdose

" ... Talent scouts spotted her on the A.C.T. stage and had her test for the role of Jon Voight's daughter in Desert Bloom. She didn't get the part, but her audition was impressive enough to gain her representation by Triad Artists ... "

Leary supervised mind control experimentation at a CIA front in Berkeley, CA for 15 years prior to his massive media promotion in the latter '60s. Leary's role was to drug, distract and discredit the American anti-war movement. At the same time, the Agency - after an Army study proposed using potent hallucinogens for chemical warfare purposes - planted directions for the manufacture of LSD and STP in academic journals accessible to the public. Lysergic acid was in large part responsible for the decimation of the left in the '70s, just as heroin would be used to destroy the Haitian Rastafarian movement - it took no more than one year - a decade later. Hippies who defend Leary are wrong-headed and have an unconscionable view of Vietnam-era progressive history, IMhO. The drug's influence was destructive, and any "revelations" that came from it were personal and subjective, like reading Proust, self-indulgent, politically useless. - AC

" ... her godfather was the late L.S.D. guru, Dr. Timothy Leary (Winona's father, Michael, formerly served as Leary's archivist and ran a bookstore called Flashback Books) ... "

Winona Ryder Detailed Biography
www.netglimse.com

THE daughter of free-lovin', counterculture types who named her after the Minnesota town in which she was born (and she's the lucky one - her siblings are named Yuri, Sunyata, and Jubal), Winona Horowitz enjoyed what you'd call an unorthodox childhood - the Horowitz clan's idea of family bonding was a good-and-rowdy protest against Agent Orange. It will come as no surprise then, that her godfather was the late L.S.D. guru, Dr. Timothy Leary (Winona's father, Michael, formerly served as Leary's archivist and ran a bookstore called Flashback Books - need we say more?), or that Beat poet Allen Ginsberg rounded out her parents' circle of friends. Winona hastens to explain when asked about her rather nontraditional upbringing that her parents are politically active intellectuals, and not acid-dropping, Grateful Dead-dogging clichés.

Leary himself summed them up as ''hippie intellectuals and psychedelic scholars,'' a judgment bolstered by the fact that the couple collaborated on a book detailing Aldous Huxley's psychedelic experiences, and then co-authored a book alleging that Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women while dosed up on opium. Growing up in a house where a high value was placed on reading, Winona's bible became J.D. Salinger's coming-of-age novel, The Catcher in the Rye. With a world view shaped by such iconoclastic parents and an idol the likes of Holden Caulfield, it's little wonder that Winona would one day prove so deft at portraying offbeat characters.

When she was 7 years old, Winona's family repaired to an upscale commune located on a 300-acre plot of land in the northern California town of Elk, where they coexisted with seven other families and a bunch of horses. The kids obviously didn't have televisions (after all, they had no electricity in their homes), but Winona's mother operated a movie theatre in an old barn, where she screened the classic films that provided her enthralled daughter with the key to her future.

After a year of living in the sticks, the family moved back to the relative civilization of Petaluma, California. During her first week at her new school, Winona, a fresh-off-the-commune tomboy, was jumped by a gang of pubescent thugs who proceeded to trounce her good for being such an obvious wuss. (''They thought I was a gay boy,'' she has offered by way of explanation.) The unfortunate thrashing yielded fortunate results: Ryder earned a stint of home study, but more importantly, her parents let her enroll in acting classes at the prestigious American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, where bullies were few and far between.

Talent scouts spotted her on the A.C.T. stage and had her test for the role of Jon Voight's daughter in Desert Bloom. She didn't get the part, but her audition was impressive enough to gain her representation by Triad Artists, which set her up with a role as a poetry-loving teen in Lucas (1986). When the credits rolled, Winona Horowitz officially became Winona Ryder; her new surname was inspired by a Mitch Ryder album belonging to her father. ...

http://www.netglimse.com/celebs/bio/winona_ryder.shtml

Also see: "MK-ULTRA's Louis "Jolly" West & the First Elephant Ever Given LSD"
•••
Ryder Shares an Attorney with CIA Contractor Brent Wilkes

" ... Wilkes's attorney, Mark J, Geragos, a high-priced and high-powered [attorney]. Geragos has represented Susan McDougal, Michael Jackson, Gary Condit, Winona Ryder and Scott Peterson, among others. ... "

" ... Why was Wilkes’s attorney thrown off the Foggo case earlier this week?
Wilkes was being represented by celebrity attorney Mark Geragos, who has represented people like Winona Ryder, Michael Jackson, Roger Clinton, and Gary Condit. Geragos refused to undergo a background check so he could get a security clearance to view classified material, of which there were at least 50,000 pages. ... "

Posted by Mrs Panstreppon
February 15, 2007

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/02/allegedly_corrupt_contractors.php
•••
Kiefer Sutherland

1969 (1988)
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder

Written & Directed by Ernest Thompson
MPAA Rating: R; German Rating: 12; Running time: 93 Minutes

"Ralph (Downey) and Scott (Sutherland) are best friends, coming of age in a turbulent time in America's history. They do all the clich'd Age of Aquarius things: hitchhike, experiment with drugs, meet nudists, and break into the Post Office to burn their draft cards. Their friendship is threatened when Ralph's sensitive younger sister, Beth (Ryder), and Scott fall in love."
•••
Robert De Niro

Dracula

Director: Kenneth Branagh Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Gary Oldman Winona Ryder Robert De Niro

http://www.buy.com/prod/dracula/q/loc/322/202012175.html
•••
'Sticky fingers' Winona Ryder in new shoplifting scandal, claims magazine
19 March 2008

Actress Winona made headlines six years ago, when at the peak of her career she was convicted of shoplifting £3,000 worth of clothing from a Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. Now in a new incident, according to America's National Enquirer magazine, the Girl Interrupted star recently set off the security alarm at Hollywood CVC Pharmacy after making several purchases.

www.dailymail.co.uk
•••
Drugs

" ... The 34-year-old actress has never discussed the prescription painkillers that were in her purse when she was busted by surveillance cameras in a Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue dressing room. ... "

http://www.infowars.com/articles/bb/scanner_darkly_ryder_keeps_eyes_open_snooping.htm

Oxycodone

CNN Transcript

... HAMMER: All right, so you remember that absolutely bizarre Winona Ryder scandal when she was caught shop lifting? Well, tonight Winona has a shocking confession. She says drugs made her do it. Nearly six years ago the actress was caught on tape stuffing all sorts of things into her bag at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. Now she`s blaming her whacky behavior on pain killers. She tells "Vogue Magazine" that she was taking Oxycodone because her arm was broken, and that got her all messed up.

Here`s what she told the magazine, quote, "it all happened in the December after the September 11th terrorist attacks. I couldn`t believe so much attention was being paid to me when terrorists had just attacked us, and there was actually all this really important news going on. It was really embarrassing. I didn`t have this tremendous sense of guilt because I hadn`t hurt anyone. Had I physically harmed someone or caused harm to a human being, I think it would have been an entirely different experience."

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0707/17/sbt.01.html

Overdose

Pictures Of Winona Ryder’s Plane Drama

"WINONA Ryder has been rushed to hospital. The Sun reports that Ryder has been had her stomach pumped after collapsing on a BA jet after a suspected accidental overdose of tranquilisers. ... "

http://www.anorak.co.uk/celebrities/195353.html

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