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Since his rise to fame more than 30 years ago, there’s been a lot of interest in Johnny Depp’s wife and who he’s dated, been engaged to and been married to over the years.
Depp has been married twice. His first marriage was to makeup artist Lori Anne Allison from 1983 to 1985. His second marriage was to actor Amber Heard from 2011 to 2016. Depp’s longest relationship was with singer Vanessa Paradis, whom he dated from 1998 to 2012 and shared two kids with: daughter Lily Rose and son Jack. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2013, Depp revealed why he and Paradis never married and what his idea of true love is. “I never found myself needing that piece of paper. Marriage is really from soul to soul, heart to heart. You don’t need somebody to say, okay you’re married,” he said. “Relationships are very difficult. Especially in the racket that I’m in because you’re constantly away or they’re away and so it’s hard. It wasn’t easy on her. It wasn’t easy on me. It wasn’t easy on the kids.”
He continued, “So, yeah. The trajectory of that relationship — you play it out until it goes, one thing leads to another. So for whatever reason that ceases, it doesn’t stop the fact that you care for that person, and they’re the mother of your kids, and you’ll always know each other, and you’re always gonna be in each other’s lives because of those kids. You might as well make the best of it.”
Throughout his three decades in Hollywood, Depp has had several public relationships. Read on for what we know about Johnny Depp’s wife over the years and his past romantic relationships.
Amber Heard (2011 – 2016)
Image: AP Photo/Joel Ryan.
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard met in 2009 while filming their 2011 movie, The Rum Diary. “That moment, was, it was, it felt like something, it felt like something I should not be feeling,” Depp recalled of a shower kissing scene between him and Heard at a court hearing in 2022. “I think there was something in the kiss in the shower that was real.” The two reunited at the promotional tour for The Rum Diary in 2011. Depp and Heard started dating after his 2012 breakup with Vanessa Paradis. They got engaged in 2014. “Of course they couldn’t be happier to be engaged and excited to share the rest of their lives together,” a source told People at the time. “Amber has really taken well to the kids and really enjoys spending time with them. And she’s even taken Lily shopping on her own for some bonding time.”
The two married in 2015. After 15 months of marriage, Heard filed for divorce in 2016. She obtained a temporary restraining order against Depp, claiming that he abused her while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Depp denied the accusations, and a $7 million settlement was reached out of court in August 2016. Heard pledged to donate the money to the ACLU and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. “Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love. Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm,” the two aid in a joint statement at the time.
In 2018, Heard wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post about her experience with domestic abuse. While she didn’t mention Depp by name, many believed that the post was about her ex-husband. Depp sued Heard for defamation in 2019, claiming that the op-ed cost him acting jobs, including his role in Walt Disney Pictures’ Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The trial for the case started in 2022.
Vanessa Paradis (1998 – 2012)
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Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis met in 1998 while he was filming his movie, The Ninth Gate, in France. The two met at the Hotel Costes in Paris, where Depp was at with his director, Roman Palinski. “She was wearing a dress with an exposed back and I saw that back and that neck, and then she turned around and I saw those eyes, and — boom!” Depp told The Daily Mail in 2011 about the moment he and Paradis met . “My life as a single man was done.” The connection was strong, as he added, “You have this feeling — I can’t really explain what it was, but I had it when I met her. I saw her across a room and thought: ‘What’s happening to me?’”
Depp and Paradis, a singer and actress, went on to welcome two kids together: daughter Lily-Rose in 1999 and son Jack in 2002. In an interview with Extra in 2010, Depp explained why he and Paradis never married. “I never found myself needing that piece of paper,” he said. “Marriage is really from soul to soul, heart to heart. You don’t need somebody to say, okay you’re married.” In a 2006 interview with ABC News, Depp called his children a “real foundation, a real strong place to stand in life, in work, in everything. …You cannot plan the kind of deep love that results in children. Fatherhood was not a conscious decision. It was part of the wonderful ride I was on. It was destiny. All the math finally worked.”
In 2011, Depp opened up about his relationship with Paradis after 13 years together. “I see that the children are happy, healthy and seem to be on the right path in life,” Depp told The Daily Mail at the time. “And then I look at Vanessa, who’s incredibly supportive, loving and talented in all sorts of ways. She and I have been together for nearly 14 years, and, well, I can hardly believe it. It only seems like yesterday that we met.” He continued, “A glass or two of wine before dinner is my favorite thing, watching the sunset and the kiddies playing nearby. It’s perfection.’
A year later, a representative for Depp confirmed that he and Paradis had “amicably” split. “Please respect their privacy and, more importantly, the privacy of their children,” the rep said. According to The Sun, Paradis received $150 million after the split.
In a statement in 2020, Paradis defended Depp against his second wife Amber Heard’s abuse allegations against him. “I have known Johnny for 25 years. We have been partners for 14 years and we raised our two children together. Through all these years I’ve known Johnny to be a kind, attentive, generous and non-violent person and father,” she said. On movie sets the actors, directors and entire crews adore him because he is humble and respectful to everyone, as well as being one of the best actors we’ve seen.” She continued, “I am aware of the allegations which Amber Heard has publicly accused Johnny of for more than four years now. This is nothing like the true Johnny I have known, and from my personal experience of many years, I can say he was never violent or abusive to me.”
Paradis went on to call Heard’s domestic violence allegations as “outrageous” and “really distressing.” She continued, “I have seen that these outrageous statements have been really distressing and also caused damage to his career because unfortunately, people have gone on believing these false facts. This is so upsetting as he has helped so many persons in his personal and professional life with kindness and generosity.”
Kate Moss (1994 – 1998)
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Johnny Depp and Kate Moss met in 1994 at Caf Tabac in New York City and started dating soon after. He was 31 years old, while she was 20 years old. “I knew from the first moment we talked that we were going to be together,” Moss said in a past interview. Depp was arrested in September 1994 after he allegedly trashed his hotel room at the Mark Hotel in New York City. According to the police report, officers found Depp in a “in a state of possible intoxication” and Moss uninjured. The judge later dismissed the charge. “I think Johnny obviously has a temper,” Depp’s friend, director John Waters told People at the time. “But this is a very minor incident. The room service must have been bad.”
In 1998, Moss denied that she and Depp ordered a champagne-filled bath, which used 36 bottles of champagne, at a hotel in West London. “It was not her. It was not Kate, it’s not her style. She doesn’t use the hotel anymore,” a rep for Moss’ modeling agency Storm said at the time, according to The Independent. Moss and Depp split in 1998 after four years together. “There’s nobody that’s ever really been able to take care of me. Johnny did for a bit,” Moss told Vanity Fair of the breakup in 2012. “Like if I said, ‘What do I do?,’ he’d tell me. And that’s what I missed when I left. I really lost the gauge of somebody I could trust. Nightmare. Years and years of crying. Oh, the tears!”
Winona Ryder (1989 – 1993)
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Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder met at the premiere of Ryder’s movie, Great Balls of Fire!, in 1989, when Ryder was just 17 years old. They went on to star together in 1990’s Edward Scissorhands before they got engaged that same year. Around that time, Depp also famously tattooed “Winona Forever” on his right arm in honor of his then-fiancée. The two split in 1993 after four years together. “They’re young, and they grew apart,” a rep for Ryder told People at the time. Depp hinted to The Los Angeles Times at the time that the media attention was part of the reason his relationship with Ryder ended. “It’s very hard to have a personal life in this town. 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,” he said.
After their split, Depp went on to change his “Winona Forever” tattoo to “Wino Forever.” “No, no, of course not,” he told Australia Tonight in 1993 about if he regretted the tattoo. “I think for me, these tattoos are a journal. As opposed to writing it on a piece of paper, I just took the initiative and put it on my skin. So I wear my journal. But even though we’re not together anymore, it doesn’t take away from the honesty of when I got the tattoo.”
In an interview with Elle U.K. in 2009, Ryder called her breakup with Depp her “first real breakup.” “I had just had my first real breakup, the first heartbreak,” she said about the time. “Everybody else just thought I had everything in the world but inside I was completely lost.”
Ryder also revealed in a past interview that she lost her virginity to Depp. “When I met Johnny, I was pure virgin,” she said. “He changed that. He was my first everything. My first real kiss. My first real boyfriend. My first fiancé. The first guy I had sex with. So he’ll always be in my heart. Forever.” Ryder also told Cinema.com about her depression after her and Depp ended their engagement. “I was very depressed after breaking off my engagement with Johnny. I was embarrassingly dramatic at the time, but you have to remember I was only 19 years old,” she said. She also revealed that things got so “dramatic” that she once “fell asleep with a lit cigarette, and woke up to the flames.”
A source also told Radar Online in 2014 that Ryder’s opinion of Depp changed after he started dating his future wife, Amber Heard. “[Winona] had a respectful relationship with Johnny for years [after their split], but she soured on any idea of an acting reunion after Johnny hooked up with Amber,” the insider said. The source explained that Ryder’s opinion of Depp changed because she believed he started dating Heard while he was still with Vanessa Paradis, with whom he shares daughter Lily-Rose and son Jack. “She’s pulled a 180 on her opinion of Johnny and his cronies because she thinks it’s a sad cliché that he’d dump his long-term baby mama for a woman in her twenties,” the insider said.
In an interview with Time in 2016, Ryder confirmed that Depp was “never abusive” to her in their relationship. “I can only speak from my own experience, which was wildly different than what is being said,” she said. “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.”
She continued, “I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened. 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.”
Ryder also released a witness statement to the court in 2020 confirming that she never experienced any abuse in her relationship with Depp. “I understand that it is very important that I speak from my own experience, as I obviously was not there during his marriage to Amber, but, from my experience, which was so wildly different, I was absolutely shocked, confused and upset when I heard the accusations against him,.” she said. “The idea that he is an incredibly violent person is the farthest thing from the Johnny I knew and loved.”
She continued, “I cannot wrap my head around these accusations. He was never, never violent towards me. He was never, never abusive at all towards me. He has never been violent or abusive towards anybody I have seen. “I truly and honestly only know him as a really good man – an incredibly loving, extremely caring guy who was so very protective of me and the people that he loves, and I felt so very, very safe with him. I do not want to call anyone a liar but from my experience of Johnny, it is impossible to believe that such horrific allegations are true. I find it extremely upsetting, knowing him as I do.”
Jennifer Grey (1989)
Image: Globe Photos/MediaPunch /IPX.
Johnny Depp and Jennifer Grey got engaged in 1989 but split after less than a year. Grey—who is known for movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Dirty Dancing—recalled her relationship with Depp in an interview with People while promoting her 2022 memoir, Out of the Corner. “There was some heat. It was a fucking bonfire. It was literally like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?’ I’ve never seen a guy like this,” she said. “And energetically, what it was like being with him, it was like, ‘Oh, I’m being totally, totally compensated for the shit I just went through,’”
Lori Anne Allison (1983 – 1985)
Johnny Depp married his first wife, makeup artist Lori Anne Allison, in 1983. He was 20 years old. Allison was the sister of the bassist and singer of Depp’s band at the time, Six Gun Method. Though the couple divorced in 1985, Allison was the one who introduced Depp to actor Nicolas Cage, who encouraged him to pursue an acting career. “I ended up acting by accident,” Depp said at a court hearing in 2022. “I was filling out a couple of job applications with a friend of mine… He happens to be an actor less known than he is now, Nicolas Cage… I was filling out applications at video stores, clothing stores just to be able to pay the rent. Nic Cage said why don’t you meet my agent… cause I think you’re an actor… You could be an actor… I said I’ll meet anybody. I’ll do anything at this point. He sent me to his agent, Eileen Feldman and I met with her. She sent me to read for a casting director named Annette Benson who was casting a film called Nightmare on Elm Street… They brought me to back to read for the director Wes Craven.”
He continued, “I didn’t have any desire to be an actor. I was a musician, but the fact that these people were going to pay me what I found to be a ludicrous sum of money…it was kinda the SAG minimum, it was $1284 a week…I’d never seen that kind of dough in my life. Then I did some other kind of dumb movies because still in my mind I was a musician and it was still a way to pay the rent, pay the bills, live. Then suddenly I found myself on that road as an actor. One thing led to another, from film to film and then I was cast in a series called 21 Jump Street when I was 22, I do believe.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-SAFE (7233) for confidential support.
