Winona Ryder has claimed that she was “absolutely in love” with Al Pacino when they worked together in the 1990s.
Ryder worked with The Godfather star, 85, in the films Looking For Richard (1996) and Simone (2002), and has recently confessed that she was “actively” in love with him during that period.
Speaking to Elle, the 53-year-old Beetlejuice actor said: “I was absolutely in love with Al Pacino when I was working with him. We were doing that workshop for Richard III, which I didn’t know was gonna be a movie. I was actively in love with him.”
Ryder also said that she told Pacino she was in love with him after he took her on a random tour of coffee shops in New York.
“He was obsessed with coffee, and he would take me all over New York – like, to the weirdest places – to try different coffees,” she explained. “I’m 22, or whatever. Finally, he’s dropping me off wherever I’m staying, and I’m like, ‘I love you, you know. I really am completely in love with you.’ And he was like: ‘Aw, honey, noooo.’”
Despite her confession of love going unrequited, Ryder said that she is still friends with Pacino and sees him regularly.
“Then, like 10 years later, I meet his girlfriend, who’s younger than me. I still play poker with him sometimes. It’s the best,” the Stranger Things actor joked.
Elsewhere in the interview, Ryder credited Jurassic Park star Laura Dern for guiding her through the early stages of her acting career. She said: “I don’t think I’d be here without her. I met her on my first screen test for Lucas – I didn’t know what a screen test was.
“Laura was there to read for the older girl, and she talked me through it, ‘cause I didn’t know what the f*** was going on. She befriended me. I was literally 12 and – nobody knows this – she took me under her wing into my twenties. That relationship got me through.”
Ryder has a habit of maintaining friendships with fellow actors. In September 2024, she told Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast that she and Keanu Reeves still call each other husband and wife in text messages more than 30 years after they were married on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula.
For the 1992 film, Coppola led the pair in a wedding scene that Ryder has long claimed occurred for real and is legally binding.
We always say who it is, even though it says it on the text. So like, on his birthday, I go: ‘Happy birthday, my husband,’” she said.
“And then he’s like, ‘Hey, my wife, I love you. KR 57.’ Like, on each birthday, he’s like KR 57 or whatever his age is. He’s always done that.”
