Where Beetlejuice cast are now – from dating Friends star to shoplifting arrest and ‘It girl’ who had four divorces | The Sun

IT’S 35 years since Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice hit our screens and became an instant classic.

This week it was revealed a long-awaited sequel is now in the pipeline, with Tim Burton once again at the helm.

It’s rumoured Wednesday star Jenny Ortego is in talks to star as the daughter of Winona Ryder’s character Lydia Deetz, and that Michael Keaton will reprise the title role. 

The spooky 1988 flick helped launch Winona’s career and also catapulted Alec Baldwin onto the A-List.

But the fortunes of the cast have been mixed – from a shoplifting charge and sex scandal to an Oscar-winning comeback.

Here we look at the “strange and unusual” lives of the Beetlejuice cast.

Michael Keaton 

Already an established actor, Michael turned down the title role three times because he didn’t understand the concept but was finally persuaded by pal Tim Burton.

He later said he shaped the iconic look of the malevolent phantom, telling the make-up team: “I want mould on my face. My hair has to look like I stuck my finger in an electric socket.”

The actor went on to land the lead in the 1989 comic book hit Batman and its sequel Batman Returns, and also starred in The Paper (1994), Multiplicity (1996) and the 1997 movie Jackie Brown.

He suffered a career lull in the Noughties, although he later said it was a conscious decision to take a step back because he fancied “taking a pause” to enjoy “having a normal life”.

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He told the Guardian he was “getting bored, hearing the sound of my voice, seeing the same old tricks. So I may have lost interest, combined with a whole lot of people not knocking on my door”.

Michael returned to movies in 2008 and six years later cemented his epic comeback with the movie Birdman, which landed him a Best Actor Oscar and a Golden Globe.

Career rebooted, he went on to star in Spotlight (2015), The Founder (2016) and, more recently, award-winning 2021 TV miniseries Dopesick. 

While filming Beetlejuice, Michael was married to Caroline McWilliams and they share a son, Sean, now 40. They divorced in 1990 after eight years and she sadly passed away in 2010 from blood cancer.

Michael, now 71, dated Friends star Courteney Cox for five years, until 1995 and has been dating Marni Turner for six years.

Winona Ryder

Winona was just 16 when she starred as Lydia Deetz and revealed she was an awkward teen who hoped she would be accepted by classmates after the film’s release.

“But it made things worse,” she told Marie Claire. “They called me a witch."

It did prove a breakthrough role, leading to cult classic Heathers in 1998 and the role of Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin and child bride Myra in 1989’s Great Balls Of Fire.

She dated Rob Lowe and Christian Slater before falling for Johnny Depp when they met on the set of Edward Scissorhands in 1989, when she was just 17.

Johnny, then 27, proposed after five months.

Winona went on to film Mermaids in 1990, but caught a respiratory infection on set which meant she had to drop out of Godfather Part III, leaving many fearing she had scuppered her own career.

But she proved them wrong with a role in the hit 1992 film Dracula.

Troubled times were ahead, however, with a heartbreaking split from Depp in 1993 which she called her “Girl, Interrupted, real life” – referring to her role as a teenager with mental illness in the iconic film released six years later.

Her career hit the skids in 2001 when she was arrested for shoplifting, having allegedly stolen more than £4,000 worth of designer clothes and accessories from Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills.

She was put on probation and ordered to do 480 hours of community service, pay over £8,000 in fines and undergo  psychological and drug counselling.

After a 15 year hiatus, during which Winona made the odd cameo in films like Black Swan, she made a triumphant comeback as Joyce Byers in Stranger Things.

Now 51, she has been dating fashion designer Scott Mackinlay Hahn for 12 years.

Geena Davis 

Geena, 67, played newlywed Barbara Maitland, who returns as a ghost to her lonely farmhouse with her husband after they are both killed in a car crash.

Three years after the film Geena starred with Susan Sarandon in her biggest hit, Thelma and Louise, before landing a role in A League of Their Own in 1992.

Named as the '90s 'It girl', Geena’s love life away has been less than smooth – with four divorces behind her.

She wed New York restaurateur Richard Emmolo in 1981, but they divorced three years later.

She went on to date Jurassic Park star Jeff Goldblum and the pair married in 1987, but he filed for divorce after three years.

In 1993 she tied the knot with Finnish filmmaker Renny Harlin, who directed her in the 1995 pirate romp Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight.

They split after five years and she began dating surgeon Reza Jarrahy, 15 years her junior at 52, – with whom she shares daughter Alizeh, 20, and fraternal twin sons Kaiis and Kian, 18.

They 'wed' in 2001, and Geena told Good Housekeeping. “I did say to Reza, 'You're about to become someone's fourth husband. What on earth are you thinking?' But as for myself, I wasn't nervous at all.

“It was exciting to know I was marrying someone who I can be cranky or selfish in front of and he doesn't run screaming from the room or judge me for it.”

While Reza insisted they were legally married, Geena claimed they never officially tied the knot after their 2017 separation and bitter custody battle. 

Geena dialled back her career while her kids were young and has recently starred in Fairyland.

On a possible return to her Beetlejuice role, she joked: “Ghosts probably don't age, and it's going to be 30 years now. Of course, I haven't aged, but I think Alec Baldwin maybe has aged, perhaps.”

Alec Baldwin

Alec  – who played Barbara’s husband Adam – became a household name after the film, despite predicting it could end his career. 

“I had no idea what it was about,” he told GQ in 2019. “I thought my, all of our careers are going to end with the release of this film. Maybe we're all going to be dead.”

Alec went on to star in The Hunt for Red October in 1990 and met future wife Kim Basinger working on 1991’s The Marrying Man.

They made it official in 1993 and welcomed daughter Ireland two years later.

But their split in 2000 was one of the most toxic break-ups in Hollywood history with a long and public court battle which Alec complained cost him over £1million.

Seven years into the legal battle he was slammed after the release of a phone message to Ireland, then 11, where he called her a "rude, thoughtless little pig".

Alec said he was left suicidal after the call was leaked to the public.

Other film credits include The Cooler (2003), The Departed (2006), and the 2004 movie The Aviator. He also starred in Tina Fey's series 30 Rock from 2006 to 2013. 

In 2012 he married current wife Hilaria and the pair now have seven kids. 

In recent years Alec, now 64, has starred in Blue Jasmine and Still Alice, but his career has been marred by a tragic death on the set of his Western epic Rust in 2021. 

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died after a real bullet was fired from the actor’s prop gun. Alec was initially charged with involuntary manslaughter, and faced up to five years in prison.

Earlier this month the charges were dropped pending further investigation, and filming resumed.

Catherine O’Hara 

Canadian Catherine was a TV comedian when she was asked to audition for Delia Deetz, her first Hollywood role, but she missed her audition after getting lost en route to meeting Tim Burton in Burbank, and was offered the role anyway.

“It's a good trick. If you're bad at auditioning, just don't go,” she joked.

The movie put her on the Hollywood map, leading to roles in the 1990 smash Home Alone, Best in Show (2000) and the 2002 movie Orange County.

Beetlejuice was also where she met husband Bo Welch, a production designer. The couple wed in 1992 and have two sons – Matthew, born in 1994, and Luke, born in 1997.

Catherine, now 69, landed arguably her most iconic role in 2015; eccentric matriarch Moira Rose in the long-running comedy Schitt’s Creek.

Jeffrey Jones

Well-known character actor Jeffrey Jones had already starred as the headmaster in teen smash Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when he played Lydia’s dad Charles Deetz in Beetlejuice.

He also appeared in other Tim Burton movies, including 1994’s Ed Wood and the 1999 smash Sleepy Hollow.

His career came to an abrupt end in 2001 when a 14-year-old boy reported him to the Los Angeles Police Department, claiming the actor made him pose for sexually explicit photos.  

He was charged with sexual offences involving a minor and pleaded no contest.

He was sentenced to five years' probation and counselling and forced to renew his entry on the sex offenders registry every year. 

He faced another charge in 2010 for not updating his sex registry data, and the disgraced actor was charged with 250 days of community service.

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