Winona TELLS ALL!

Former It girl Winona Ryder started over after a mental breakdown and shocking arrest

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Winona Ryder has been famous for four decades. So after joining the cast of Stranger Things more than six years ago as financially struggling single mom Joyce Byers, the former child star, now 50, found herself serving as a mentor of sorts to the teenagers on the hit Netflix series. "I want the kids to understand, this does not happen," Winona recently told Harper's Bazaar of the explosive fame and attention that comes from being on such a wildly popular series. "This is really unusual. And I'm always telling them, 'The work is the reward!' Because when I was that age, it was so hard to enjoy the fruits of my labor."

Instead, Winona spent her own youth caught in a dark and dangerous spiral. A soul-crushing breakup with Johnny Depp was the catalyst for a mental health crisis she's said made her "hit bottom." Then, a decade later, as her career began to cool, an embarrassing arrest sent Winona scurrying away from Hollywood. "I know it's kind of like, 'Oh, poor Winona,"" she said. "But when you're in pain, pain is pain. But that [realization] took me a while." Winona, says a source, "has admitted to friends that she's made a lot of bad choices. But she also believes that she's come out stronger for them."

DOWNWARD SPIRAL