One thing I've come to notice is that there's a certain type of young actress who is commonly presented in an archetypal theme that seems to speak to how she is perceived - or handled - by Hollywood.
I first noticed this with Susan Oliver, whose elemental sexual magnetism often had her visually or narratively presented "behind bars." Emily Browning — who is very much a modern Susan Oliver — is similarly presented as being institutionalized in a number of films.
And then there's Winona.
Many of Winona’s early roles have her playing a child bride or lover of an older man — there's a very definite pattern there. And a troubling pattern, given all that we've seen in her life and career since. And also what we've come to learn about show business and how it feeds on vulnerable child actors.
The public didn’t recognize exactly what they were being shown at the time, but now it’s impossible to unsee it.
Winona’s character, 13 year-old Gemma, falls in love with 21 year-old Rory in Square Dance. Rob Lowe is seven years older than Winona.
15 year-old Winona dated 45 year-old Michael Nesmith (her producer on Square Dance), who confessed he was “madly in love with her.” (Nesmith can be linked to Jeffrey Epstein via mutual associate, John Brockman).
Winona’s character is set to be wed to Beetlejuice, played by Michael Keaton. Keaton is 20 years older than Winona.
Winona plays 13 year-old child bride of Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire. Dennis Quaid is 17 years older than Winona.
Winona played a child bride in the “Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child” music video (1989) Mojo Nixon is fourteen years older than Winona.
Winona’s character in Mermaids (1990) falls in love with Joe, 11 years her senior. Actor Michael Schoeffling is also 11 years older than Winona.
Winona’s character falls in love with “ageless” Edward Scissorhands (1990). Johnny Depp — who was involved with the actress offscreen — is eight years older than Winona.
Winona’s character is the bride of Count Dracula (1992) Gary Oldman is thirteen years older than Winona, and by all accounts had acted horribly towards her.
Winona’s (teenaged) character falls in love with Professor Bhaer in Little Women. Gabriel Byrne is twenty-one years older than Winona.
With that in mind, it’s worth looking at bit more closely at the environment Winona existed in prior to embarking on a career in acting.
She was being raised in an environment and culture where traditional child-rearing was not only unfashionable, it was something to be aggressively dismantled and replaced with some nebulous - and frequently dangerous - concept of “child liberation.”
From a 1990 interview:
First of all, I should tell you that everything that’s been written about that has been wrong. I grew up in San Francisco (Elk and Petaluma, actually- CK). My parents were not hippies; they were writers. They were very active politically, but on the intellectual side, not on the “taking drugs in a field and listening to the Grateful Dead” side.
How I was raised was, there were no rules—nothing like that. If I wanted to take a drug because I was in school and everybody was doing it, I could go to my parents and say, “I really want to try this.” And they’d say, “If you do this, O.K., but this is what can happen to you…”
If you happened to be around at the time, I don’t need to remind how often this kind of thing ended in absolute catastrophe, and how often it exposed vulnerable children to sexual predators.
Then there is the fact that her godfather - and her father’s boss, essentially - was a real-deal MK ULTRA asset. No small detail when we start to look more closely at Winona’s struggles over the years…
