Winona Ryder reveals she and Keanu Reeves still call each other husband and wife over text

Winona Ryder has revealed that she and Keanu Reeves still call each other husband and wife in text messages more than 30 years after they were married on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula.

For the 1992 film, Coppola led the pair in a wedding scene that Ryder has long claimed occurred for real and is legally binding.

During a recent appearance on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Ryder said she and Reeves still text regularly. “We always say who it is, even though it says it on the text. So like on his birthday I go: ‘Happy birthday, my husband,’” she said.

“And then he’s like, ‘Hey, my wife, I love you. KR 57.’ Like on each birthday he’s like KR 57 or whatever his age is. He’s always done that.”

During the press tour for their 2018 film, Destination Wedding, Ryder told journalists that she and Reeves were technically still married.

“We actually got married in Dracula,” the Stranger Things star told Entertainment Weekly at the time, adding: “No, I swear to God, I think we’re married in real life.

“In that scene, Francis [Ford Coppola] used a real Romanian priest,” the Stranger Things star continued. “We shot the master and he did the whole thing. So I think we’re married.”

Meanwhile, Coppola backed up her comments, telling The Guardian that same year: “In a sense when we were all done, we realized that Keanu and Winona really are married as a result of this scene and this ceremony.”

“We did a whole take of a marriage ceremony with real priests,” Reeves told Esquire magazine in 2021. “Winona says we are. Coppola says we are. So I guess we’re married under the eyes of God.”

Reeves is currently dating visual artist Alexandra Grant while Ryder has been dating Scott Mackinlay Hahn since 2011.

Ryder is reprising her role as Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,the sequel to the 1988 classic, Beetlejuice.

The actor recently made headlines for airing her complaints about her younger co-stars.

“I don’t mean to sound so hopeless,” she said. “There are a few that are just not interested in movies. Like, the first thing they say is, ‘How long is it?’”

Although Ryder did not mention any names, Millie Bobby Brown who plays Eleven alongside the star in Stranger Things, went viral earlier this year for saying, “I’m like ‘How long do I have to sit there for?’ Because my brain and I don’t even like sitting for my own movies,” when supposedly life-changing movie recommendations were made to her.

Reflecting on growing older within the industry, Ryder told Esquire magazine: “I just think that social media has changed everything, and I know I sound old. I’m very aware of that.

“And part of me thinks, ‘Gosh, am I like vaudeville at this point?’ Like ‘Hey, kids, turn down the music!’ But I just think there was such an abundance: the history of film, the history of photography, it’s so rich, and there’s so much there, and I don’t mean we should go backwards, but I wish and I hope that the younger generation will study that.”

Ryder, who is known for being an avid cinephile, praised her Beetlejuice Beetlejuice co-star Jenna Ortega for her in-depth knowledge of movies.

The sequel brings the Deetz family back to the family’s country home after the death of Charles Deetz. Ryder’s Delia is grown up and is now mother to her own surly teen daughter, Astrid, played by Ortega. Just as Delia did a few decades ago, Astrid finds the model city in the attic and releases Michael Keaton’s Betelgeuse, unleashing chaos.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in theatres from 6 September.