Winona Ryder stepped away from Hollywood after her shoplifting arrest in December 2001 and the negative attention that followed. In a recent interview with Esquire on August 29, the 52-year-old actress reflected on the incident’s impact.
“I checked out,” she told the magazine when asked how she coped after her arrest. “I think I just checked out.”
The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actress was charged with shoplifting $5,500 worth of clothes from a Saks Fifth Avenue store in Beverly Hills. In December 2001, she was convicted of grand theft and shoplifting, and received three years of probation, fines, and community service. She then took a break from acting and moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
In a 2016 interview with Porter, Ryder said her break from Hollywood gave her time that she “really needed.
“Psychologically, I must have been at a place where I just wanted to stop,” she said at the time. “I won’t get into what happened, but it wasn’t what people think. And it wasn’t like the crime of the century! But it allowed me time that I really needed, where I went back to San Francisco and got back into things that … I just had other interests, frankly.”
Ryder’s new movie, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, hits theaters on Sept. 6.