MAGAZINE ARTICLES
BIG! - June 1991
Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder
How They Got Together
by Dawn Bebe
Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder are the most talked about couple in Hollywood at the moment. He's the star of Cry Baby and the massive new hit film Edward Scissorhands. She's hot property as the star of Heathers, Beetlejuice, and Mermaids. And what's more, they've been madly in love with each other since meeting two years ago. BIG! finds out how Hollywood's hottest couple came together...
Just two years ago Johnny was heartbroken and single. He had divorced his first wife, Lori Anne Allison, who he'd married when he was 20 and just starting out in showbusiness. And although beautiful girls were flocking to the side of the star of 21 Jump Street, engagements to Twin Peaks' Sherilyn Fenn and Dirty Dancing's Jennifer Grey had been called off.
There was even a car bumper sticker around Los Angeles which said "Honk if you haven't been engaged to Johnny Depp!"
Meanwhile 17 year old budding movie star Winona Ryder was just starting out on the road to love. She'd starred in Beetlejuice and had a semi romance with her Heathers co-star Christian Slater (he later told reporters that the pair started rumours of a romance just for a laugh!)
Johnny and Winona both knew each other's work. She'd seen Johnny's TV show, and he'd seen some of her films. Then came a fleeting encounter which would change their lives.
In 1989, Johnny went to the premiere of Winona's film Great Balls of Fire, and their eyes met across the crowded cinema lobby.
`It was a classic glance,' says Johnny, `like that zoom lens shot in West Side Story when everything around it gets foggy.'
'It wasn't a long moment, but time seemed to be suspended,' says Winona.
`I knew right then,' adds Johnny. But they didn't meet that night. Months later, a mutual friend dragged Winona to meet Johnny at his room in a posh Los Angeles hotel, Chateau Marmont, where Johnny was staying while filming 21 Jump Street. This is where the romance really began.
`I thought maybe he would be a jerk,' says Winona smiling. `I didn't know. But he was really, really shy.'
As they talked they discovered they had loads in common. They both liked novels by J D Salinger and the soundtrack of The Mission film.
For their first real date they went to a party in the Hollywood hills at the home of Winona's godfather. The courtship continued while Johnny filmed Cry Baby, and he often took Winona onto the set to meet his co-stars.
The next step was to meet Winona's parents. Her dad is a poetry bookseller and Johnny's a big poetry fan, so they hit it off immediately. Now the couple often go to stay with Winona's parents in Petaluma, California for weekends.
`My parents really love him a lot,' says Winona.
`It could have been easy for them not to like me,' smiles Johnny. `Other people might have just seen the tattoos!'
Each of Johnny's huge tattoos is deeply significant to him. One says Betty Sue, his mum's name, while another is a picture of an Indian to signify Johnny's Cherokee roots. So, as a mark of his love for Winona, Johnny had "Winona Forever" tattooed on his right shoulder. Winona went with him to watch. `I'd never seen anyone get a tattoo before so I was pretty squeamish I guess' she says.
`She kept taking the bandage off and staring at it afterwards,' says Johnny. Winona adds, `I was sort of in shock. I kept thinking it was going to wash off or something - I couldn't believe it was real. I mean, it's a big thing because it's so permanent!' she smiles.
In return, Winona now wears a huge diamond engagement ring.
Johnny says that although he's been engaged before, nothing compares to what he feels for Winona.
`I've never been one of those guys who goes out and wants to screw everything in front of him. When you're growing up you go through a series of misjudgments. Not bad choices, but wrong choices... people make mistakes. My previous relationships weren't as heavy as people think they were. But there's never been anything throughout my 27 years that comparable to the feeling I have with Winona. You can think something is the real thing, but it's different when you really feel it. The truth is very powerful - believe me, this "Winona Forever" tattoo is not something I took lightly. Her eyes kill me...'
And he says that their relationship is more serious than some people think. `People don't realise, but we've been together almost two years. Whatever relationships I've been through before, they haven't lasted this long. With Winona it wasn't `Hi, nice to meet you, here's a ring. It was about five months before we decided to get engaged.'
As for the wedding, the couple say they will marry when they have time. They both have heavy work commitments and don't want to rush things.'
`We want to be able to do it at a time when we can get hitched and then go away for a few months - leave the country, just go wandering around, and be on a beach somewhere with tropical drinks,' says Johnny dreamily.
So for now, Johnny and Winona are happy to live in a little house they bought in the Californian hills, make movies together -they've already finished Edward Scissorhands, which will be coming out soon in Britain - and just be the perfect Hollywood couple. LIST
CHAT 20 July 1991
People Really Resent Me
by Shirley Ayre
And Winona can't wait to start a family of her own. Her fiance is 28-year-old actor Johnny Depp, who starred in last year's Cry Baby.
At the moment there are no definite wedding plans. But busy schedules seem to be the only thing standing in the way of the young lovers tying the knot.
`We'll get married when we both have time to have a long honeymoon and don't have to go straight back to work,' Winona says with certainty.
Johnny's womanising past doesn't worry Winona, who claims that - in her life - boyfriends have always been quite thin on the ground.
But she can afford to be confident. Sporting a diamond as big as a rock on her engagement finger, and with the knowledge that her boyfriend has "Winona Forever" tattooed on his arm, Winona has no reason to doubt that Johnny's heart belongs to her.
In fact, so in love are the couple that they can hardly bear to be apart. Starring together in the fairy-tale film Edward Scissorhands (released 26 July) was like a dream come true.
In the film, Winona plays Kim Boggs, a blonde suburban cheerleader who falls for the weird-looking Edward Scissorhands (Johnny Depp) - the creation of an inventor whose badly timed death leaves Edward with shears for hands.
`I can't imagine anything better than to work with someone you love because then you're never separated from them,' Winona reminisces with a sigh. `You get to go to work together and go home together - it's a real blessing.'
Johnny was even at Winona's side when she collapsed from exhaustion in Italy and had to abandon her part as Michael Corleone's granddaughter in The Godfather III.
In fact, he caught the brunt of the vicious rumours flying around about the `real' reason for Winona withdrawing from the movie.
`People were just waiting for me to screw up because I hadn't made a really big mistake yet and they really hated that,' explains Winona. `So they jumped on The Godfather thing as an excuse to say whatever it was they said.' LIST
SELECT - July 1991
Meet The Happy Couple
By Lucy O'Brien
She is a teenage post-punk bohemian with nine major movies in the can. He is a manmade mutant with an unusually firm handshake. Together Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp are Hollywood's latest cult celebrity item.
At the time Winona was in the spotlight having just got engaged to Johnny Depp, the 26-year old gunslinger who came to LA eight years ago, intent on becoming a rock musician but who became an actor instead. Depp soon made his name as a heart-throb via the TV series 21 Jump Street and in kitsch movies like John Waters' Cry Baby , leaving a trail of broken hearts behind him. As he'd been engaged twice before to aspiring starlets, when his union with Winona was announced, car bumper stickers appeared in Manhattan saying "Honk If You've Never Been Engaged to Johnny Depp".
`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 colouring but we're from very different backgrounds, so we're interested in each other the whole time.'
For Edward Scissorhands (which opens in the UK in July) Winona was playing opposite Johnny. It also reunited her with Beetlejuice director Tim Burton.
Edward Scissorhands explores yet another side of peer pressure of the American teenage nightmare. The film is a Gothic 90's fairytale in which Winona plays Kim, a sunny,blonde suburban cheerleader who falls in love with Edward (Depp) - a freakish human creation devised by an eccentric inventor who dies before completing the project. Edward is a normal(ish) human being with one highly original feature - instead of hands, he has an arsenal of sharp pointy objects.
`Physically, my role in Scissorhands was everything I'd been anti throughout my whole life. But the reason she fell in love with Edward was because she felt different. She was trying to live this perfect, normal American teenager life, but she's still not like that inside. That's what attracted me. That inside she's really weird.' LIST
THE FACE - July 1991
One person who'd agree is Depp's fiancee Winona Ryder who became available to shoot Edward Scissorhands after falling ill on the set of Godfather III. It is the first film they've starred in together. What was it like playing opposite his wife-to-be? `I was nervous. It's like another level of exposing yourself to someone. You know you can be together, but then to act together, be different people, especially someone like Edward... it was scary at first. She was nervous too. But it was great. Besides the fact that I love her and everything, she's a great actress, very giving and considerate. It was really easy working with her, because stuff automatically happens. You don't have to try. Stuff comes out.'
It goes without saying that Depp is a man in love. Visibly. His romance with Winona has been consummated and consumed in public. The details are well known. Their eyes met at the premiere of Great Balls of Fire, but they didn't. A few months later, they were introduced by a mutual friend. Going on for two years later, they're engaged and Depp has "Winona Forever" tattooed on his arm.
The Hollywood publicity machine has always thrived on star romance, but it seems in the post-Aids age, with Warren Beatty- style bedhopping publicly frowned on, big-name couples are a real item. Yet amid all the usual sleaze about Bruce and Demi and Julia and Kiefer, the youthful Depp and Ryder have been treated with kid gloves so far, cast as hip, romantic innocents. A recent fashion shoot in Vogue, which showed the couple embracing, packaged them as a "fairytale couple" - along with Pretty Woman and Green Card.
Not surprisingly, it irritates Depp to see his love-life diagnosed like a cultural symptom. Still isn't he scared that once the press honeymoon is over, the scandal rags will go out to break them up? `We've already had rumours we're splitting up. Such bullshit. Things like People magazine don't really bother me - it's like the flies buzzing around this trailer. I can deal with their presence if I have to, but I'd much rather squash them like a pea.' Another problem they face are all the dodgy team-up scripts they get sent. `They're so obvious. Like, they offered us a gangster movie together. I'm a mobster and Winona's my moll.'
Depp and Ryder seem so well suited that you forget that she's 20 and he's nearly 28. Depp seems younger, in looks and attitude. In fact, he's difficult to place in time. Tim Burton says that Depp reminds him of the classic movie stars of the Thirties and Forties (in fact, he's called Johnny and Winona a dark Tracy and Hepburn), yet with his Anlophile dress sense and tastes in music, he comes on like a post-punk hipster.
Thanks to Depp, the Pope of Trash is now Reverend John Waters. Depp got him ordained in the Universal Life Church and wants him to do the honours at the marriage. The big day will have to wait though. After Depp finishes here, Ryder is due to start doing Dracula with Francis Coppola. `We'll do it when we have a chunk of time and we can do it quietly with a three-month honeymoon. I've heard about places in Australia, islands where you can be dropped off and there's nothing there at all. I guess you just run around eating coconuts and foliage and bugs.'
So does he believe in marriage as an institution? `I believe in marriage if that's what feels right. If you feel something, do it. Why regret later? But it's true you really never know until you hit that one. Believe me, when I met Winona and we fell in love, it was absolutely like nothing ever before.'
Back at the motel in Patagonia, I'm out of questions, but Depp is keen to carry on. `Ask anything,' he says. `The dumber the better.'
Who does the dishes, you or Winona? `We live in hotels, so it's not our responsibility. But I've done some dishes. We've actually done dishes together. I washed, she dried.' LIST
VOGUE - June 1992
Vogue Men
by William Norwich
When they were first dating but making films at separate locations, Johnny Depp sent Winona Ryder two hundred helium balloons one night. "She could barely walk to the phone to say thank you, they took up so much room," he says, still pleased with himself.
Winona as in "Winona Forever," as the tattoo on his proclaims, is currently filming The Age of Innocence, Martin Scorsese's adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel, in upstate New York. Johnny meanwhile, is writing a movie with his brother. "It's not about the child within," he jokes. "It's basically about good and evil and believing in something." LIST
Shout (UK) - 1993
Interview: Shout caught with Johnny Depp recently and got him to
spill the beans on movies, clowns and if he's still snogging Winona!
Are you fed up with all the stories about you and Winona?
Yeah, I mean the last film I had out in America was Edward Scissorhands and that was two years ago! I don't know what the obsession with me is! It's so crazy that newspapers make up all these stories about me that never really happened. Part of it is my fault because I spoke fairly openly about my relationship with Nonie (that's Winona Ryder to you and me!). I stopped because I was really uncomfortable about how it seemed to give people the right to stop me in the street and ask me all these personal questions!"
Finally Johnny, are you and Winona still going out together?
"Yeah, we're still seeing each other. I'd love to work with her again, you know. She's a great actress, I'd love to find the right project for us to do together!" LIST
SKY - January 1993
Winona Takes All
by Edwin J Bernard
She says Johnny Depp was her first serious boyfriend they met when she was 17 - and her lack of experience had made her cautious. `The biggest misconception about me is that I've been with a lot of guys - in the biblical sense - and that I've had a lot of boyfriends, or experience in that way.' she says, playing with Johnny's round diamond solitaire. `I've been linked to a lot of guys I've never even met, and a few who were just friends. When I start reading that kind of stuff, I get frustrated and hurt.' (The most recent stories alleged post Age of Innocence dalliance with Daniel Day-Lewis).
`Actually, it's kind of boring now because everything's been written,' she laughs. `I don't know what else they can come up with. I think they might even be running out of stories, so they'll try and create something new with someone that I probably don't even know.' Happily, whatever rift - real or imagined - occurred between her and Johnny has been resolved and a wedding is still in the offing. `It has to be when we have a really good stretch of time to do it in, because I want to take a lot of time off. And right now he's working, so... But I don't mind waiting; I'm very happy,' she gushes. `Very happy.' LIST
GQ - October 1993
Johnny Angel
by Johanna Schneller
Throughout their nearly four-year relationship, now ended, Depp and Winona were a tabloid staple. They were simply too young and gorgeous to be left alone. And they kept doing their ridiculously romantic things. She bought him a star, the way one can buy acres of rain forest, Depp tattooed her name on his body, a banner reading "Winona Forever" all over his upper right arm. It was more than romantic, it was reckless.
"I think of my tattooes like a journal," Depp says. He now has four. "To have it removed, or erase it, is to try and say it never happened. If I alter it in some way, make it funny - put her next boyfriend's name on top of it, say - it would still be honest."
But what happened between Depp and Ryder? Where did all the rebel love go? "It's one of the mysteries of everybody's life," he says. "It's not like you suddenly one day go `Un, you know what? I just don't love.' She's a sweet kid, man. It's always a little weird, you're like `We used to do this and that, we used to have fun and hang out together.' But at least we were able to feel that for each other. I feel real lucky that we got that." LIST
SKY - January 1994
Soul Girl
by Edwin J Bernard
Ryder is both remarkably candid and remarkably throwaway when she talks about the end of her romance with Johnny Depp, which she blames more on their youth and inexperience than on public scrutiny. `It was a really good thing that it ended, I think, for both of us,' she says. `I don't know how much the media had to do with it, because we really had drifted apart a long time before the press found out that it had ended. So it was old. Of course, it's painfl and I was gong through it, but... I feel bad.' she giggles aplogetically. `It wasn't that bad, you know? It was such a good thing that it ended andI think he's great and I have nothing but kind things to say about him, but it was just over.' LIST
ROLLING STONE - 10 March 1994
by Jeff Giles
Just after New Year's, Ryder and I are scheduled to have dinner, and she asks if I would mind eating at her place: She doesn't feel up to going out - if you can't go to a bar without a drunk screaming your name, then whatever privacy you do have triples in value. Which reminds me of what Ryder says about Johnny Depp: not a hell of a lot. She never makes an unkind remark about him, on or off the record. Perhaps to aid her never-ending quest to be gracious, she doesn't read Depp's press and hasn't seen Benny and Joon or What's Eating Gilbert Grape. I ask her to free-associate on WINONA FOREVER.
Q: Do you ever think about Johnny's tattoo?
A: No.
Q: When you were breaking up, did you think about the tattoo?
A: No.
Q: Well, now that you're thinking about the tattoo...
A: What do you want me to say? It's like "It's there. Oh, well".
If I hated him, I'd probably say something mean. If I was still
in love with him, I'd probably say something poignant. He's a
great guy, but I don't really think about it.
That didn't yield much. I ask Ryder about the life of a celebrity couple, and she's more expansive: `I remember us desperately hating being hounded. It was horrible, and it certainly took its toll on our relationship. Everday, we heard that we were either cheating on each other or that we were brken up, when we weren't. It was like this constant mosquito buzzing around us... Now, I feel I have an identity, whereas before I was so used to people telling me who I was. I was Winona! I was precocious! I was adorable! I was sexy! These labels were being slapped on me, and I didn't have a life outside of it, except when I went back to Petaluma.' LIST
VOGUE - December 1996
by John Powers
`Being with Johnny broke me in. We couldn't go a week without reading something that either wasn't true or was only half true, or was taken out of context. I wouldn't want to go through that again. Looking back, I can see that it did affect our relationship. I was at an age when I was really insecure.' She sips her Evian. `But in retrospect, I'm grateful for the experience. By the time I was 21, nothing could faze me.' LIST
US - December 1997
Little Big Woman
by Chris Heath
Soon afterward, I meet Ryder in San Francisco. Over dinner - roasted vegatables for her - I bring up the subjcet of Depp.
You were one-half of the most revered wild romance of the last
decade.
[Perking up] Do you think? People don't even remember that we
were together.
It's public face was very golden: the glorious-young-rebel, love-
tattoos-and-total-abandon experience of its time.
It was very difficult having it so public. I think it really hurt
us, hurt the relationship. It's mnade me very... My dad and mom
just moved, and they have - this is so embarrassing - they have
this room of just archives of me, and I was flicking through the
old stuff, and it's really interesting to see how I changed in
terms of talking about my relationships. I learned a lot from
that - from being so open, and from being stupid.
Nonetheless, that romance was perceived as sort of utopian.
I think that's a lot to do with him. He's such a romantic figure.
It was a pretty major time. It wasn't what they made it out to
be: a lot of drama. There was quite a bit of that, but it was my
first love and my first relationship, a fiercely deep love that I
don't know that I'll ever... That first love is like that, isn't
it? I don't know, it was a wild time. Half the stuff they said
about us was true, and half of it wasn't.
Which half?
[Nodding] I know.
You're friends again now?
Yeah, it's really great. I mean, it's not like we're buddy-buddy.
It's really nice, though, when you think about a person, to not
have a pit in your stomach, or cringe, or feel heart-broken, or
feel they hate you, or do I hate them? It's really nice, because
after you break up you go through a couple of years of that.
You were completely out of contact?
Yeah. I think breakups are the same in any field you're in, but
it is particularly hard when it's being documented and when you
see the person's picture everywhere. People don't usually have
that added problem when the breakup with someone. They don't have
to see billboards of them. It was very painful for a long time.
In hindsight, do you have a simple thought about why it didn't
work?
This sounds like such a cop-out answer, but I just don't think it
was out time. I think it was our time, and then time passed. You
kind of just fall together and then you fall apart, I guess. I
thought about it for years, and I kind of don't really have an
answer to that.
I don't even know who was doing most of the breaking up. It was mutual. It really was. And you're just kind of waiting for the other person to say so. But I do feel weird talking about it. He doesn't say a word about it. I don't know how he feels. I know I'm not saying anything that could upset him. But it's something I really want to protect.
She says that when she got in last night she wrote in her journal, as she does every night. "I think when we talked about Johnny, that triggered something in me," she says. "Because I didn't know if it was OK. I never really know if it's OK."
To talk about it from his point of view?
"Yeah, or even from my point of view," she says. "And it's just a weird thing. We've never had a discussion about it…. It was a strange thing." LIST
NOW - May 1998
I'm A Hopeless Romantic
by Gill Pringle
So Matt (Damon) won't mind then that she's about to start shooting a new film opposite old flame Johnny Depp? Er, well, he might just a bit.
`It's not as if Johnny and I are exactly buddy-buddy, but it's nice to know we can still have a friendship,' says Winona, who was engaged to Depp for four years after meeting on the set of Edward Scissorhands .
`It's good to be able to think about him without having a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, or cringing, or feeling heartbroken or like he hates me.
After you break up, you go through all of those feelings. `Break- ups are hard for anybody, but it's particularly tough when your life is being documented and you see the person's picture everywhere. Most people don't have that added problem when they break-up.'
But, according to rumours, Matt isn't quite so relaxed about Winona playing Johnny's lover in Michelangelo Antonioni's Just To Be Together.
`Matt adores Winona and is only too aware what can happen between two people on a movie set,' says a pal. `Johnny has always protested that he still loves Winona, while she has always held a special place for him in her heart because he was her first real love.
Matt feels threatened by the fact that Johnny is now single, having split up with Kate Moss. He's jealous and doesn't want anything to get in the way of what he sees as the woman of his dreams and his soul mate.'
Recalling her time with Depp, Winona says, `Dating an actor is like seeing each other on billboards. Our break-up was like a never ending story because it was such a public thing. We didn't know how to break-up. I had my first real relationship with Johnny. It was a fiercely deep love that I don't know that I'll ever...' she trails off. `The first love is like that, isn't it? It was a wild time back then.' LIST
LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE - November 1998
Leader of the Pack
LOOKS - July 1999 (reprint)
Ultimate Ingenue
by Steve Pond
She does now adhere to the lessons of her very public relationship with Johnny Depp. `You learn a lot from your first bout of being a public couple,' she says. `You learn always to leave and go places separately, live like a spy, and make plans like "Met you at two o'clock by the restroom of the cineplex". And you learn, you know, never to talk about it.' LIST
Evening Standard (UK) - 1999
World Today: Winona in fire drama over old flame Depp
Actress Winona Ryder has said she was so depressed at breaking up with fiance Johnny Depp that she went on a drinking binge and almost burned herself to death writes Liz Hodgson.
Winona, 27, said she fell asleep with a lighted cigarette and woke up to find her hotel room in flames. "I haven't visited that dark side ever since," she said. Winona, now dating Good Will Hunting star Matt Damon, told New Weekly magazine she is happier than ever.
Another of Depp's ex-girlfriends, model Kate Moss, also accidentally started a fire when she left candles burning in her room at a London clinic. LIST
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