Winona Ryder And Johnny Depp: Inside Their Fairytale ‘90s Romance
Winona Ryder is standing by her former man. When asked about actress Amber Heard’s allegations that Johnny Depp was physically abusive to her during their marriage, Ryder says she just can’t imagine it.
“I can only speak from my own experience, which was wildly different than what is being said,” Ryder told Time. “He was never, never that way towards me. Never abusive at all towards me. I only know him as a really good, loving, caring guy who is very, very protective of the people that he loves.”
Winona was quick to point out that she is not trying to call Heard a liar, but she makes it clear that her own years with Johnny were a very important part of her life—and that they weren’t violent.
“I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened,” Ryder said. “I’m not calling anyone a liar. I’m just saying, it’s difficult and upsetting for me to wrap my head around it. Look, it was a long time ago, but we were together for four years, and it was a big relationship for me… Imagine if someone you dated when you were—I was 17 when I met him—was accused of that. It’s just shocking. I have never seen him be violent toward a person before.”
Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp began dating in 1989 after meeting at the premiere of the movie Great Balls of Fire. They fell in love fast and were engaged within five months. The engagement lasted for three years, with Winona and Johnny even making the 1990 movie Edward Scissorhands together while they were a real-life couple. Winona was once quoted as saying she was “pure virgin” before she met Johnny, and he was quoted as saying he’d “die” for her.
In 1990, Johnny Depp talked to Interview magazine about his relationship with his Winona Ryder.
“Winona Ryder’s my fiancée, yes,” he said. “My friend Josh introduced us and we just started hanging out. And we’ve been hanging out ever since … We’re engaged … I love her more than anything in the whole world.”
Winona, on the other hand, preferred to keep her personal life private.
“I don’t even like discussing my relationship with Johnny with the press,” Ryder told Rolling Stone in 1991. “It’s nobody’s business. How do you explain a relationship anyway? Nobody knows anything about it, nobody, not even friends know what my relationship is like. I don’t even know it.”
Johnny famously got a tattoo that said “Winona Forever.” Life was good for the Generation X poster couple.
After their split in 1993, Johnny had his tat amended to “Wino forever.”
But what ended the relationship? It was no secret that Depp was a bit of a serial proposer back in the day. Before he popped the question to Winona Ryder, he was engaged to actresses Jennifer Grey and Sherilyn Fenn. But in a 1993 interview with the Los Angeles Times shortly after his breakup with Winona, Depp placed some of the blame for his third failed engagement on the tabloid frenzy surrounding his relationship with his Edward Scissorhands co-star.
“It’s very hard to have a personal life in this town,” he told the Times. “My relationship with Winona, it was my mistake to be as open as we were, but I thought if we were honest it would destroy that curiosity monster. Instead, it fed it, gave people license to feel they were part of it.”
In 2009, Winona Ryder told Elle UK that when the relationship ended, she had to deal with her first big heartbreak during the height of her fame as a teen actress.
“I had just done Dracula and Edward Scissorhands,” Ryder told the magazine. “I had just had my first real break-up, the first heartbreak. And I think it was really ironic because, like, everybody else just thought I had everything in the world, you know, I had no reason to be depressed, everything was sort of at its peak, but inside I was completely lost.”
Twenty-three years later, Winona is still finding her way back—and she still has Johnny’s back.
Winona Ryder currently stars in the Netflix thriller, Stranger Things.
Take a look at the video below to see Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp doing an interview together in 1990.
[Photo by Diane Freed/Stringer]
