Winona Ryder covers the August issue of Harper’s Bazaar, all to promote Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (the long-awaited sequel to the 1988 cult classic). Winona reprised her role as Lydia Deetz, now a widow who communes with the dead on a talk show. Jenna Ortega plays her daughter, in what is probably the most perfect casting of all time. This profile wasn’t super-complicated or deep and that’s fine – Winona is 52 years old now, she’s lived a big life and she protects her peace. She’s not online, she’s been in a 14-year relationship with Scott Mackinlay Hahn, and she’s happy to still be working on interesting projects. The interview took place in a cemetery in Georgia. Classic. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

The word icon has become overused: “Everyone uses it now, and they don’t know what a real icon is,” she says. But she looks, as she always has, like the poster child for Gen X.

Lydia reminds Winona of her own disastrous youth: “In my 30s, I had two disastrous relationships that were—they weren’t wrong, but this was before you would ever think to Google someone. When I look back, I’m like, ‘What the hell was I thinking?’ I was dating the type of person who only lets you know a few weeks in that they’re in a relationship with someone else. And you’re just like, ‘What the f–k?’ ”

The elder stateswoman: Now 52, Ryder is in a much different place in her life and work, inhabiting more of an elder-stateswoman role. She refuses, for example, to wear heels on the red carpet, preferring to style herself (a rarity in Hollywood), either hiding her boots with a floor-length dress or incorporating them into her outfit. “I actually made a conscious decision, maybe six years ago,” she says.

Her boyfriend Scott Mackinlay Hahn: “He’s so great. He really is. I’m really lucky,” Ryder says. They will soon return to either New York City, where they rent, or Los Angeles, where she owns a house. She and Hahn want to move, but they’re not entirely clear as to where.

She’s nervous about the election. Her parents—established writers and left-wing intellectuals—decamped from Northern California, where Ryder was raised, to Canada after George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004. Uncertainty looms on the horizon. Ryder—who can careen from topic to topic in delightful digressions—lists why: the college-campus protests, Jared Kushner’s statement about developing Gaza, the carceral system, and Joe Biden’s chances of beating back Trump in the general election. “It’s just a scary time,” she adds.

Meeting Tim Burton when she was a teenager: “I was sitting there, and this guy came in holding a folder, who I thought was a messenger or something. We started talking about Edward Gorey. About half an hour into this conversation, I feel like I’m making a friend, and I ask him, ‘Do you know Tim Burton? This is his office, right?’ And he went, ‘Well, that’s me.’ I didn’t know that directors could look like Tim. He was 27. Immediately, I was like, ‘Oh, sh-t. I’m sorry. Do you want me to read?’ He told me no. I remember feeling like ‘Oh, God, did I blow it?’ I had this fear when I got up to leave, and I was like, ‘Hey, man, it was really great meeting you. Good luck, this sounds really great.’ I added, ‘If you want, I can come back.’ But he told me that he wanted me to do it. That had never happened. I’d never been offered a part without a reading for it or on the spot like that, ever.”

Thoughts about retiring: Working on a big show like Stranger Things can be draining, she admits, though she’s ever grateful for the opportunity. “And then I think, ‘What if I just hang it up?’ And then I think, ‘Well, if Jim [Jarmusch] wanted me to do something, I would do it,’ and then you start thinking of all the people that you would work with if they called, and that’s not really retiring. That’s just being available.”

Whether she thinks she had PTSD from her younger days: “The answer would be no. I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to live this life—however intense and overwhelming it got, it’s NOTHING compared to what it is now with the internet and social media. I just find myself feeling tremendous empathy toward people who have sacrificed so much.”

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

I loved the part where she considers retiring but then thinks about all of the directors she’d like to work with again and she’s just like… no, I’m not retiring, they might call. I think it’s so cool that she’s returning to this Beetlejuice world and that she’s still doing weird, interesting and even mainstream work. I wonder what she gets offered and what she turns down, because I bet that even today, she gets offered a lot. Anyway, there’s a lot about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in this piece, so much so that I really want to see it now.

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Cover & Instagram courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar.