It’s been 20 years since Girl, Interrupted first hit theaters, but there’s no doubt that the indie film’s legacy has been everlasting.
Based on Susanna Kaysen’s 1993 memoir, Girl, Interrupted tells the harrowing story of a teenager’s 1967 stay in a mental institution after she attempted to take her own life. When she was 18, Kaysen was admitted to McClean Hospital near Boston, where she stayed for over a year after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
Kaysen, played by Winona Ryder, befriends a number of other young patients, including Daisy (Brittany Murphy), Lisa (Angelina Jolie) and Polly (Elisabeth Moss). The women suffer from a range of mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder and sociopathic disorder. Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto and Whoopi Goldberg also star in the dark drama.
The project was near and dear to Ryder’s heart, having spent time at a facility herself when she was 20 years old. “I was overworked and overtired — too tired to sleep,” she recalled in a 1999 interview with the New York Times. “I was in a really bad state.”
Jolie, at the time an up-and-coming actress, also looked back at the film as a transformative moment in her career. After all, it’s the project that turned her an Academy Award winner and a household name.
“At the end of the film there’s a certain sense of them saying to Lisa, ‘Nobody wants you to live, nobody likes the way you are — you’d be better off if you were sedated and tied down and shut up,” Jolie said of her Girl, Interrupted character during a 2001 interview with Rolling Stone. “Am I just too loud and too wild and do I just need to let everybody live their lives and shut up and calm down?’”
Jolie continued, remembering the character fondly: “She lived too big, was too honest, was too hungry, was too full of life.”
Scroll down to see how the Girl, Interrupted cast has changed throughout the years.
It’s been 20 years since Girl, Interrupted first hit theaters, but there’s no doubt that the indie film’s legacy has been everlasting.
Based on Susanna Kaysen’s 1993 memoir, Girl, Interrupted tells the harrowing story of a teenager’s 1967 stay in a mental institution after she attempted to take her own life. When she was 18, Kaysen was admitted to McClean Hospital near Boston, where she stayed for over a year after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
Kaysen, played by Winona Ryder, befriends a number of other young patients, including Daisy (Brittany Murphy), Lisa (Angelina Jolie) and Polly (Elisabeth Moss). The women suffer from a range of mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder and sociopathic disorder. Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto and Whoopi Goldberg also star in the dark drama.
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The project was near and dear to Ryder’s heart, having spent time at a facility herself when she was 20 years old. “I was overworked and overtired — too tired to sleep,” she recalled in a 1999 interview with the New York Times. “I was in a really bad state.”
Jolie, at the time an up-and-coming actress, also looked back at the film as a transformative moment in her career. After all, it’s the project that turned her an Academy Award winner and a household name.
“At the end of the film there’s a certain sense of them saying to Lisa, ‘Nobody wants you to live, nobody likes the way you are — you’d be better off if you were sedated and tied down and shut up,” Jolie said of her Girl, Interrupted character during a 2001 interview with Rolling Stone. “Am I just too loud and too wild and do I just need to let everybody live their lives and shut up and calm down?'”
Jolie continued, remembering the character fondly: “She lived too big, was too honest, was too hungry, was too full of life.”
Scroll down to see how the Girl, Interrupted cast has changed throughout the years.
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Winona Ryder
After taking a brief hiatus in the wake of a now-infamous shoplifting incident in 2001, Ryder was back in the spotlight by 2006. Since then, she’s appeared in huge blockbusters like Star Trek, Black Swan, The Dilemma and Netflix’s smash series Stranger Things.
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Angelina Jolie
Girl, Interrupted and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider brought Jolie into the mainstream in 2001 — and she’s been a Hollywood icon ever since. Her whirlwind romance and messy divorce from Mr. and Mrs. Smith costar Brad Pitt were the subject of headlines for nearly a decade. Now, she’s a humanitarian, director and mother of six.
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Clea DuVall
After a series of horror flicks and small TV roles, DuVall costarred in Ben Affleck’s Argo, earning her and the rest of the cast the 2013 SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. Since then, she’s appeared in American Horror Story: Asylum, Veep and The Handmaid’s Tale.
The California native made her directorial debut with 2016’s The Intervention and subsequently directed Hulu’s Happiest Season in 2020.
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Brittany Murphy
Following her turn in Girl, Interrupted, Murphy gained critical acclaim for starring in 8 Mile alongside Eminem and Michael Shannon. In December 2009, she was found unconscious in the Los Angeles home she shared with husband Simon Monjack. Two months later, her cause of death was ruled as pneumonia. Her final film, Something Wicked, was released in April 2014.
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Elizabeth Moss
Moss’ appearance in Girl, Interrupted coincided with her longtime run as Zoey Bartlet on the hit political drama, The West Wing. Shortly after the NBC series came to an end, she moved on to star as Peggy Olson on AMC’s Mad Men, for which she earned four Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe nomination. Now, Moss is most recognized for her critically acclaimed performance in Hulu’s dystopian thriller, The Handmaid’s Tale.
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Jared Leto
After acclaimed roles in Requiem for a Dream and Panic Room, Leto stepped away from the big screen and into the recording studio. Leto formed alt-rock band 30 Seconds to Mars with his brother, Shannon Leto, and released five albums between 2002 and 2018. More recently, he’s returned to acting with critically-acclaimed roles in Dallas Buyers Club and Suicide Squad.
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Jeffrey Tambor
This film and TV star has played a number of memorable roles since playing Dr. Melvin Potts in Girl, Interrupted — from Sid in the Hangover trilogy to George Bluth, Sr. on Arrested Development. His most recent venture, Transparent, earned him an impressive 22 awards nominations across the series’ five years on Amazon Prime. In 2018, however, Tambor was fired after two allegations of sexual assault were made against him.
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Vanessa Redgrave
A legendary English actress of stage and screen, Redgrave’s career spans decades. After appearing in Girl, Interrupted, she returned to the theatre to star in The Year of Magical Thinking and Driving Miss Daisy, both of which got her nominated for Tony Awards. She also stepped back into film for roles in Lee Daniels’ The Butler and Foxcatcher.
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Whoopi Goldberg
Goldberg became a staple of daytime television in 2007, when she replaced Rosie O’Donnell as the new moderator of The View. She is one of only 15 people to have been named EGOT winners, earning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards throughout her impressive career.
