Winona Ryder is known for a lot of things. Being the original pixie cut rebel, the shocking shoplifting incident of 2001, and being a 90’s poster girl for Generation X angst (remember “Reality Bites”? Of course you do.). Now she can add bullying victim to her list.

Winona Ryder recently opened up about a bulllying incident in Junior High School that actually went on to change her life. She had a short haircut at the time, and a group of boys thought she was a gay boy, according to ABC.

“I remember the halls were empty and these kids started shouting ‘faggot,’ and I didn’t think they were talking to me,” she said. “Walking home after leaving the nurse’s office — and I’ve never talked about this — I remember pressing on the bandage because I wanted it to look more dramatic. I had this inner monologue going of Humphrey Bogart, like, ‘being roughed up!’ I was pretending I was in some gangster movie. It was oddly my way of dealing with it, because if I didn’t, I probably would have been really scared.”

After the terrifying incident, Winona was homeschooled, which freed up her time so that she was able to attend classes at the American Conservatory Theater in San Fransisco. While she was there, she was discovered, and the rest is history!

“Had I not been homeschooled, I would not have been able to go,” she said. “It’s almost weird fate that it happened that way.”

From there, Ryder went on to receive a Golden Globe in 1993, and currently has three Oscar nominations to brag about. After her arrest for the above-mentioned 2001 shoplifting, her career in movies went down the tubes. But, in 2010, it had a revival with her role in the smash, “Black Swan”. Now she is enjoying a nice comeback in the upcoming releases, “Homefront“, which comes out this month, and “Divergent”, which is slated to be released in March of next year.

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