Winona Ryder says Tim Burton helped her embrace being a 'weird girl': 'Reinforced my confidence to be myself'

The actress was a teen when she starred in Burton's "Beetlejuice."

Winona Ryder toasted Beetlejuice Beetlejuice director Tim Burton Tuesday at his Hollywood Walk of Fame induction ceremony, and she couldn't help but add a personal note.

"Tim, your friendship has been such an enormous gift," she said from the podium. "When I met you, I was a weird kid."

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The director of colorful movies such as Big Fish and 1989's Batman joked that Ryder was now a "weird adult," to which she agreed before returning to her speech, which you can watch in full beginning around the 22-minute mark in the video below.

"You affirmed my voice. You reinforced my confidence to be myself, to go against the tides of conformity," said Ryder, who's now 52. "Your creative inclusiveness showed me what true artistic collaboration looked like, and, in other words, you made being a weird girl not just okay, but something to celebrate and even kind of cool."

Ryder and Burton worked together on the original Beetlejuice in 1988, when she was a teenager. They reteamed for Edward Scissorhands in 1990 and for 2012 animated film Frankenweenie.

"You've carried that torch for us weirdos, making us all feel seen and valued," Ryder said.

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The actress complimented her director's understanding of the heart.

"He knows the heartache of the misunderstood, the strange and unusual," she said, repeating a memorable phrase from her Beetlejuice character, Lydia Deetz. "He doesn’t just understand them, he celebrates them, whether outcasts, oddballs, terrifying, or hilarious, he gives them depth, humor, and always a certain gallantry. And he gives them their dignity. His heroes are the very outcasts that he loves."

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The two-time Oscar nominee explained to EW last month that Burton had long expressed interest in revisiting the Beetlejuice story.

"I just remember every year or two, we'd get together," Ryder said. "And, you know, he'd pace around and be like, 'This isn't like a sequel. It's just like things happen in life, and I really want to know what's going on with them now.'"

The long-awaited Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, costarring Michael Keaton, Catherine O'Hara, Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, and Justin Theroux, opens Friday.

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