They were once young, in love, and even engaged to be married. But, they broke up after dating for only four years.
Editor's note: This article was originally published on April 20, 2020. It has since been updated.
Not everyone gets to have a beautiful "happily ever after" with the love of their life. Some people are hit by loss or tragedy unexpectedly and it takes them a lifetime to overcome the pain in their hearts. The grief they faced might even shape their future selves. For actor Johnny Depp, 60, breaking up with the love of his life Winona Ryder, 51, left him a different person.
The couple first met in 1989 at the New York premiere of Great Balls of Fire! and split just four years later after a whirlwind romance. Once the hottest couple in Hollywood, they are only friends now. But, their friendship is so strong that during Depp's hardest time she was by his side. She was ready to defend his honor and reputation after his ex-wife, Amber Heard, accused him of being violent.
"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... I have never seen him be violent toward a person before," she said in his defense.
But, how did they go from being madly in love to just friends several years later? For 17-year-old Ryder, Depp was her first everything when they started dating. "When I met Johnny, I was pure virgin," she once said. "He changed that," she added, according to Mirror UK. And, she changed him. "He was my first everything. My first real kiss. My first real boyfriend. My first fiancé. The first guy I had sex with," she said about the then-26-year-old.
He had been previously married, divorced, and engaged, and had broken up before he met her in 1989. However, none of that bothered her. "People assume it bothers me that he's been engaged before, but it really doesn't. We have a connection on a deeper level. We have the same coloring, but we're from very different backgrounds, so we're interested in each other the whole time," she was quoted as saying in the book The Secret World of Johnny Depp.
For their first date, they met at a friend's house and she was enamored by how "shy" he was. He too was enchanted by her completely. "It was absolutely like nothing before," he previously said. "We hung out the whole day… and night, and we’ve been hanging out ever since. I love her more than anything in the whole world," he added.
Together, they read Beat poetry, collected first editions of those poetry books, visited her fathers' counterculture bookstore in Petaluma, listened to music, and spent hours together. He even got a tattoo that said, "Winona Forever." Eventually, in 1990, they even starred together in the film Edward Scissorhands. Working together brought them closer and just after five months of dating, the Pirates of the Caribbean star asked her to marry him. Unfortunately, they broke up in 1993 and called off their wedding.
After the breakup, the actor was just shattered. He couldn't even bring himself to talk about the split. "He was so desperately in love with Winona," a friend told PEOPLE, "that when they broke up, he wouldn’t admit it was over for the longest time."
The break-up had changed the Stranger Things actress, who called Depp her "first real breakup, 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,” she said to PEOPLE in 2009.
"I can’t complain about anything, because I’m so lucky, I’m so lucky," she thought. "After that I realized I needed to take time off more [regularly]," she added.
Meanwhile, the Sweeney Todd actor seemed to have moved on and fallen in love many times over. However, those close to him say that he had changed. Director Tim Burton, who is a long-time collaborator with Depp, said, "I felt so bad. I asked him why it happened but all he said was, ‘It wasn’t her [Ryder's] fault, it was mine.’" Even though he dated other people, "It wasn’t the same as Winona," said Burton. "I felt weird to be around him like he wasn’t acting like Johnny anymore. It’s almost like Winona took Johnny’s soul, Johnny’s love," Burton said, according to Mirror UK.
The Alice in Wonderland actor's streak of unlucky relationships still seems to be going on. After being married for only two years, between 2015 and 2017 he split from his wife Amber Heard, of Aquaman fame. Their divorce has been acrimonious and the proceedings are still ongoing. Meanwhile, the Lone Ranger star has joined Instagram recently while in lockdown and has already garnered 1 million followers.
References:
https://time.com/4380330/winona-ryder-comeback-stranger-things-netflix/?xid=homepage
https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/devastated-johnny-depp-was-never-21686171
https://books.google.co.in/books?
https://people.com/archive/cover-story-love-and-depp-vol-42-no-14/
https://people.com/celebrity/winona-ryder-recalls-teenage-heartbreak/
