Maybe Winona Ryder should consider a career in screenwriting. Along with other celebs like Courtney Love and Rosario Dawson, Ryder was in on the whole "JT LeRoy is real" scam. She even twisted this tale of her imaginary discovery and imaginary meeting of the imaginary boy for Vanity Fair in 2003.

"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 thihttp://www.jossip.com/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&blog_id=3s!' 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."

Honestly, we preferred the speech she gave Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites (at the end, when they're in the bar) but for a VF performance, this even beats Lindsay Lohan's "I was making myself sick, my life is so stressful," saga.

STARS BACKED JT BOOK FRAUD [Page Six]