While she might always be the teen actress who starred in “Beetlejuice” and “Heathers” to some, Winona Ryder admits she feels a lot more content in this stage of her life. 

“I’m not complaining at all but when you go through your adolescence doing it and then you go through the ingénue (stage), there is a lot of pressure,” says Ryder, during a TIFF press conference for “The Iceman.”

“I’m actually very psyched to be 40 and psyched to get older because I think you just become more comfortable with yourself, and it’s more interesting.”

Ryder rose to fame at the age of 17 with the 1998 hit “Beetlejuice” as goth teenager Lydia Deetz, a role she credits for kick starting her acting career.

“I feel very blessed actually because I feel Tim Burton kind of gave me a career with (that movie) because I don’t know if Hollywood would’ve known what the hell to do with me. I wasn’t very pretty and I was sort of going through my adolescence so that film was very groundbreaking and also successful and that led to some other things.”

Ryder quickly become one of the hottest actresses of her generation with cult films like “Heathers,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Reality Bites” and went on to earn two Best Actress Oscar nominations – for 1993’s “The Age of Innocence” and 1994’s “Little Women.”

But all the success made Ryder, whose more recent appearances include 2009’s “Star Trek” and 2010’s “Black Swan,” realize she wanted more than to just be a Hollywood star.

“I think for me, I started so young and when you experience a lot of blessings and success when I did, and usually you’re told you get three years and it’s a miracle just to have that, so I was sort of constantly (in disbelief) I was still doing it, even back in my 20s,” says Ryder.

She says it prompted her to realize how important it was to have a life outside of work.

“It’s equally important for me to be a good friend and sister and daughter and just a good person and have a healthy life I can feel good about … and I think I needed to take some time to do that.

It’s resulted in her taking on fewer roles but the actress says she couldn’t turn down the opportunity to appear in “The Iceman,” where she plays the wife to notorious hit man Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon).

“It takes something very special to make me want to leave my life and (this role) was something that did that.”