‘Honestly, I was terrified’: Winona Ryder on returning with ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’

The night before I’m scheduled to speak with Winona Ryder in a restaurant on Central Park South, she did some arts and crafts. It’s not until about 25 minutes into our interview that I actually get a chance to directly ask a question about the project that Ryder is ostensibly promoting: Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” In it, Ryder reprises her role from 1988’s “Beetlejuice” as Lydia Deetz, the sullen teen who meets a pair of ghosts in her attic and is eventually pursued by the title demon played by Michael Keaton in a now-iconic striped suit. Thus, she ended up with a résumé of titles that made her an icon of Gen-X rebellion, whether she was in period skirts or sunglasses: “Heathers,” “Little Women,” “Reality Bites,” as well as her collaborations with Burton, including “Edward Scissorhands” and, yes, “Beetlejuice.” As he lounges on a hotel couch in New York, his hair typically askew, Burton, 66, recalls identifying with Ryder when he first considered her for the role of Lydia, who wears a black veil over her face and intones, “My whole life is a darkroom — one big dark room.” “There was a sensitivity and an artistic quality, but also an otherworldliness that I remember feeling as a teenager,” he says. When Ryder signed onto “Stranger Things” she was still in a period of reemergence that began six years prior with a scenery-chewing role in Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 “Black Swan.” But even within the much-publicized ebbs and flows of her career, including a brief retreat from the spotlight, Ryder held out hope that she would get to reprise Lydia. “You’re at a weird spot in your life and you let someone in and before you know it they’re taking advantage,” Ryder says of his character.