Winona Ryder love life: Johnny Depp heartache, Keanu Reeves marriage and ‘disastrous' exes
Beetlejuice star Winona Ryder has been in a happy relationship for more than a decade, but before finding love with her partner, she dated the likes of Johnny Depp, Matt Damon and Christian Slater.
Winona Ryder will be back on the big screen when the highly-anticipated Beetlejuice sequel – aptly titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – is released in UK cinemas next week.
The Lydia Deetz actress, 52, has been in the public eye for almost four decades and has had a string of high-profile relationships.
While Winona is now in a 13-year relationship with fashion designer Scott Mackinlay Hahn, she has admitted that her love life has been “disastrous” in the past.
The Stranger Things star said in a Harper’s Bazaar interview last month: “In my 30s, I had two disastrous relationships that were - they weren’t wrong, but this was before you would ever think to Google someone.
“When I look back, I’m like, ‘What the hell was I thinking?’”
Winona’s first high-profile romance was with her Heathers co-star Christian Slater. The pair reportedly dated between 1988 and 1989.
However, it didn’t last and Winona told Vogue in 1993: “He broke my heart, or I thought he did at the time.”
Winona was famously engaged to Johnny Depp after meeting at the premiere of Great Balls of Fire in 1989.
Shortly after meeting the then-18-year-old, Johnny told PEOPLE: “There’s been nothing in my 27 years that’s comparable to the feeling I have with Winona.”
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He proposed just five months into their relationship and even got his infamous “Winona Forever” arm tattoo. The ink would read “Wino Forever” after the Edward Scissorhands stars split in 1993.
Looking back on their time together, Winona called Johnny her “first real breakup, the first heartbreak”.
Speaking about the relationship breaking down during the height of her career, the Oscar nominee told Elle in 2009: “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.”
Years later, Winona defended her ex-fiancé after Amber Heard accused him of abuse. She told Time Magazine in 2016: “I can only speak from my own experience, which was wildly different than what is being 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.”
Four years after her split from Johnny, Winona began dating Matt Damon after being introduced by friends and former couple Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck.
They dated from 1997 until 2000 and ended things on “good terms”. She told Blackbook Magazine in 2009: “Matt couldn’t be a greater, nicer guy. I’m really lucky that I’m on good terms with him.”
In a bizarre twist, while Winona was never romantically linked to Keanu Reeves, they may have accidentally gotten married.
The actors had a wedding scene in the 1992 movie, Dracula, but director Francis Ford Coppola enlisted a real priest to conduct the ceremony.
Winona explained in a 2018 interview: 'We actually got married in Dracula. No, I swear to god I think we're married in real life. In that scene, Francis used a real Romanian priest. We shot the master and he did the whole thing. So, I think we're married.'
Keanu echoed this, telling Esquire: “We did a whole take of a marriage ceremony with real priests. Winona says we are. Coppola says we are. So I guess we're married under the eyes of God.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in UK cinemas on September 6.
