Winona Ryder has spoken about her December 2001 shoplifting arrest for the first time, saying she found the attention “embarrassing”.

She told Vogue magazine recently that she blames painkillers, which left her in a state of “confusion”, for the incident: “Two months prior to that, I broke my arm in two places, and the doctor, a sort of quack doctor, was giving me a lot of stuff and I was taking it at first to get through the pain. And then there was this weird point when you don’t know if you are in pain but you’re taking it.”

“I didn’t have this tremendous sense of guilt, because I hadn’t hurt anyone. Had I physically harmed someone or caused harm to a human being, I think it would have been an entirely different experience.”

“The attention was what was embarrassing. I never said a word. I didn’t release a statement. I didn’t do anything. I just waited for it to be over.”

Winona was charged with “grand theft” after being spotted trying to steal designer clothes and accessories from Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue and was sentenced to three years probation, 480 hours of community service and made to pay around $10,000 in fines and damages. She then made a “a very conscious decision not to work” and moved to San Francisco to be near her family.

She added: “In a very weird way, [the arrest] was a blessing, because I knew I couldn’t do that [painkillers] anymore.”

“No one [in my family] ever got angry with me. Concerned, yes, but not concerned with a drug problem or anything. Because after that night I pretty much didn’t ever. … If you are ever arrested, you can’t ever do that again.”