Echoing Johnny Depp’s former partner Vanessa Paradis, actress Winona Ryder says the actor, to whom she was engaged in the 1990s, never displayed the abusive behavior that his current, estranged wife Amber Heard alleges.
Calling it “unimaginable,” the two-time Oscar nominee, 44, told Time magazine, “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.”
Noting, “I wasn’t there” during his 15-month marriage to actress Heard, who filed for divorce on May 23, Ryder acknowledged, “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,” she said. “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 started dating Depp in August 1989 and they got engaged the following year. They split in 1993.
French singer-actress Paradis, Depp’s former partner of 14 years and the mother of their daughter, Lily-Rose, 17, and son, Jack, 14, wrote in a May 27 open letter that Depp “is a sensitive, loving and loved person, and I believe with all my heart that these recent allegations being made are outrageous.”
