They were engaged. They had a dog. She broke up with him by leaving a note in a hotel room.
The Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey dated Johnny Depp in the late 80s.
Sadly, even though they were talking about marriage within weeks,
things came to an end, and the actress learned that Johnny had moved on with her neighbor,
Winona Ryder . Today, we’re looking into a steamy romance between two rising stars of the 80s.
When Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder hit the scene as one of the most adored iconic couples of the early
90s, he was hot off his engagement with Jennifer Grey. In fact, Jennifer said his motorcycle jacket
was probably still warm from the nine months she’d spent wearing it when she found out her
“darling neighbor,” Winona, was “banging her ex.” In Jennifer’s memoir, Out of the Corner,
she shared that her romance with Depp started after her engagement to her Ferris Bueller’s
Day Off co-star, Matthew Broderick , ended. At the time, the actress was dealing with a
lot of stress from a tragic car accident she was in with Broderick at the wheel.
Two people died, and she put herself on an automatic pilot to get through the trauma.
She tried to get by until things felt good again. But she eventually realized it was no way to live.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, the actress recalled the incident, saying,
“I would say — top three traumas of my life, maybe top one. Broderick was a great driver,
and nobody was drinking. And it was tragic, and I think about the family in Ireland all the time.
It’s just something that you just don’t come back from in the same way.”
Grey and Broderick’s romance did not survive the aftermath of the tragedy.
According to Jennifer, their relationship had grown “toxic,” but she pretended they could make
things right. Then, he begged her not to fly to Los Angeles for her first major movie premiere.
“Flying home for the premiere of my first big movie meant only one thing:
that I was not a good person,” she revealed. Jennifer went anyway, but was soon back with
Broderick in his hospital room. She hoped he would share in her excitement but recalled him saying,
“I really don’t want to hear this.” After their first breakup, Broderick proposed.
They reunited, and she eventually accepted his ring, but that didn’t fix the problems
in their relationship, and the pair called it quits. Madonna even wrote her hit song
Express Yourself about the couple’s breakup. Soon after the split, she and Depp started
a heated romance during which he proposed to her within two weeks!
According to Jennifer, she thought Johnny was ‘so ridiculously beautiful’ when their romance began.
Apparently, while weathering the storm, she was set up on a blind date by her agent.
She said she wasn’t in “shape” to go out with anyone, having just had her “only serious
relationship … go up like a flaming ball of shit.” But after seeing her as Baby in Dirty Dancing,
the 21 Jump Street star supposedly confessed to having a “massive crush” on her to her agent,
who then worked her magic. That night, Grey said she opened the door to see “the most
beautiful man-boy” she’d possibly ever seen. “What exactly am I looking at?” she wondered.
Jennifer described the Johnny she knew as “so charming and quirky and weird.”
Things between her and the actor got off to a pleasant start, as the two “talked, drank Jack
Daniel’s, laughed our asses off, took cigarette breaks midcourse” during their first date.
They had an “intense make-out session” in his stepfather’s car,
and then he slept over with her on her mom’s daybed. He’d proposed within two weeks.
According to Jennifer, there was genuine chemistry between her and Johnny at the beginning of their
romance. “There was some heat. It was a fucking bonfire. It was literally like, ‘Are you fucking
kidding me? … I’ve never seen a guy like this,’” she wrote about the first time Depp took her out.
Jennifer admitted that her relationship with Johnny made up for the hardship she faced.
While speaking to ET, the actress called him “sweet, and loving, and romantic”
and that she had enjoyed the relationship with the actor after her split from Matthew.
“We were young... To me, this guy was the answer to my problems. I was in desperate
need of rebounding into something that looked and felt like 1989 Johnny Depp,”
Grey said. She called their relationship a very soft landing after surviving a tragedy.
In her book, Grey shared a portion of her journal in which she described Johnny Depp as if he was a
new beginning for her. “On August 12, I wrote in my journal, ‘I’m in love, pretty sure for
the first time in my life ... He’s kind, funny, smart, moral, thoughtful, respectful,’” she wrote.
The Independent reported that the lovebirds even shared a dog named Lulu. “She was our
practice baby and someone to keep me company when Johnny was out of town,” Grey wrote.
Jennifer and Johnny’s engagement lasted nine months. As much as it wasn’t the only thing
that led to their relationship going sour, the pair couldn’t survive Depp’s fast-rising career.
The wedding was set to occur the following year, but it would never come to pass.
As his fame grew and he became exasperated by certain aspects of it, their dynamic changed.
After nine months, Grey said Depp wasn’t as present in the relationship. The Red Oaks actress
explained that as he grew frustrated with being a television heartthrob and lashed out at the
world around him, their initial heat cooled. Depp had “started missing his flights home
to L.A., having overslept, or when he did come home, he’d be crazy jealous and paranoid about
what I’d been up to while he was gone.” He became moodier and less and less present. She
kept wondering how or if she was ever going to get that easygoing, funny, devoted, adoring guy back.
“I attributed his ill-temper and unhappiness to his feeling miserable and powerless to
get off Jump Street when all he wanted was to be in movies,” she continued.
The actress also said that the commute caused other changes in her former flame’s behavior.
Aside from questioning her actions, Depp allegedly got into his share of trouble during that period
of time, “fights in bars, skirmishes with cops.” Grey then promptly ended their romance just
before her 29th birthday. She broke up with him via a note she left in his hotel room
after he left for a meeting one day and didn’t come back or contact her.
According to Jennifer, life after Johnny was going pretty great for a moment.
That is until I learned that “my darling neighbor was banging my ex,” she noted,
“the classic nightmare of feeling replaced ….” After the lovebirds called it quits,
the Pirates of the Caribbean actor went on to date Winona Ryder,
who had been Grey’s neighbor at the time, of all things.
She called watching Depp move on with Ryder a “bizarre, virtually seamless changing of the
guards.” And she had “the added fun of the blow-by-blow press coverage of what
would become one of the most beloved celebrity couplings of the nineties.”
Her breakup with Depp came in a line of “impulsive, destructive” decisions that “knocked
the wind” out of her. The timing of his new relationship was a bit much for the actress. And
to her, the very public displays of affection with Ryder “nullified” her own nine months with Depp.
Grey said her heartache was overwhelming, but she noted a lot of it didn’t have anything
to do with her heartthrob of an ex — he was just the face of grief at the time.
After two engagements in the ’80s, Grey married actor Clark Gregg in 2001. They split in 2020,
and their divorce became final in 2021. When it comes to her own dealings with
Johnny Depp, Jennifer Grey seems to have mostly moved on from the situation.
One would imagine that it’s interesting for her to look back on those times now, especially in the
midst of what Depp is currently experiencing. When asked about the very public, very messy
lawsuit Johnny’s currently involved in, the actress said it breaks her heart.
“I haven’t known him for 30 years. I haven’t talked to him. I haven’t seen him… The
whole thing makes me insanely sad,” she said. Could a reconciliation with Johnny be possible?
Well, anything is possible. Former flames, and all.
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