Winona Ryder will take another step in her protracted movie comeback with a role in the ensemble drama The Informers, which begins shooting next month. The 35-year-old actor has been a marginal presence since her high profile conviction for shoplifting in 2002.

Based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, The Informers is a dark tale of a 1980s Los Angeles infested by a rogues' gallery of executives and cult leaders, rock stars and vampires. Ryder will take the role of a newsreader who has recently been dumped by her producer boyfriend. She co-stars alongside Billy Bob Thornton as an amoral Hollywood businessman and Mickey Rourke, who plays a studio security guard who abducts a small child. Gregor Jordan will direct the production.

Despite twice being nominated for Academy Awards, Ryder has seen her career falter in recent years and she has struggled to re-establish herself after being arrested for $5500 worth of clothes from a Beverly Hills department store in December 2001. Since then she has appeared in just three films, cropping up in an uncredited cameo in The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, co-starring in the flop comedy The Darwin Awards and playing a junkie double-agent in Richard Linklater's satirical thriller A Scanner Darkly.