Winona Ryder

Winona Ryder plays Joyce Byers in Stranger Things. Joyce's urgency gives the opening mystery much of its force. Ryder makes the fear specific to a mother trying to find her son, rather than a general performance of alarm.

Her film career includes Beetlejuice, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, The Age of Innocence and Little Women. On television, she also plays Evelyn Finkel in The Plot Against America.

Stranger Things draws on her ability to make intense feeling remain human. Joyce can be exhausting to the people around her without becoming a figure the show treats as ridiculous. The performance asks us to follow the concern beneath the behaviour, even when nobody else has yet accepted what she is saying.