After Ryder's film debut in Lucas (1986), she gained attention with her performance in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice (1988). She garnered critical acclaim and two consecutive Academy Award nominations for The Age of Innocence (1993) and Little Women (1994). Her other films during this period were Reality Bites (1994), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), The Crucible (1996), Celebrity (1999), and Girl, Interrupted (1999), which she also executive produced.
In 2002, Ryder appeared in Mr. Deeds. In 2010, she was nominated for two Screen Actors Guild Awards: When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story and Black Swan. She also reunited with Burton for Frankenweenie (2012). Since 2016, she has starred as Joyce Byers in the Netflix science fiction horror series Stranger Things, for which she has received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations; and in 2020, she starred in the HBO drama miniseries The Plot Against America.
