STARS BACKED JT BOOK FRAUD
WINONA Ryder and other celebrity "intimates" of fictitious writer JT Leroy were part of the conspiracy that pulled off the biggest literary hoax this side of James Frey.
Courtney Love, Rosario Dawson, Tatum O'Neal and Susan Dey all claimed they were friends of the made-up teen hooker-turned-bard. And Italian actress Asia Argento even once told PAGE SIX that she was having Leroy's baby.
It seems clear now that at least Ryder and Argento always knew that "JT Leroy" was actually Savannah Knoop, a California woman who posed as the imaginary writer under wigs and oversize sunglasses at book readings, and that Leroy's prose was actually written by Laura Albert.
Argento had reason to play along. She was hyping her movie "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things," which is based on the Leroy short-story collection and which hits theaters March 10.
The film's red-faced producers recently had to rewrite their press releases once the hoax was exposed. Variety reports the pitch now describes the meandering mess of a movie - which stars Peter Fonda, Marilyn Manson and Michael Pitt - as "the back story of one character who rocked the world of literature, fashion, music and film without ever existing."
No celeb was more complicit in the scheme than Ryder, who spun a tall tale to Steve Garbarino for his 2003 Vanity Fair piece, "The Divine JT Sisterhood," about how she befriended Leroy when he was a teenage street urchin right after her breakup with Johnny Depp.
"I had two tickets to the opera, and I was, like, 'I don't want to go alone,' " Ryder said. "And then I saw this kid standing near the doors to the opera house, and he was trying to listen in. He was a total ragamuffin. So I said, 'Hey, I have this extra ticket. Do you want to go see the opera?' He was too young to be creepy. He said, 'Oh, my God! I really wanted to see this!' I think it was 'La Boheme.'
"And he was crying throughout it. And I started crying for my own reasons, watching this beautiful kid so affected, someone his age grasping it. We went to this diner afterward and talked. I wanted to take care of him, have him move in, but he said he was heading back south. I fell in love with him. And I've been in love with him ever since."
Ryder's rep declined to comment about her Oscar-worthy performance.