What Johnny Depp's First Wife Is Doing Now
Long before Johnny Depp was Captain Jack Sparrow or even 21 Jump Street's Officer Tom Hanson, he was married for a brief period to his first wife, Lori Anne Allison. On one day in 1983, she became Lori Depp, a name she keeps to this day, though the couple have long since split up. Even though their relationship was brief, they'll forever be connected by the romance they once shared ... and their last name, of course.
Since their breakup, Johnny Depp has become one of the most famous men in Hollywood, evolving from teen idol to veteran actor with many accolades to his name — and some checkered allegations as well. But Lori has flown mostly under the radar throughout the years, tending to her own life, developing her career, and chasing her ambitions. So what's the woman who was Johnny's first bride up to these days? Quite a bit, it turns out. Here's the scoop on Lori Depp, and what she's been up to lately.
A rebel artist from the start
From the very beginning, Depp has always had a bit of a wild streak, according to her website. As a kid growing up in South Florida, she often drew on her dolls and cut off their hair, despite drawing the ire of her mother. After that, she graduated to drawing on paper with makeup, a foreshadowing of her later creativity.
When she became a teenager in the 1970s, she found her inspiration in people who bucked the norm. "At fourteen, my biggest influences were musicians, groupies, models, drag queens, and actors and actresses," she wrote on her website. Citing David Bowie especially, Depp knew she was not interested in being a part of the mainstream. So, while her peers in school were studying to be doctors and lawyers, she was shaving her eyebrows, dying her hair, and rocking some off-beat clothing.
And being different never bothered her. "I was considered a freak among my peers, but the ability to be creative was more important to me than fitting in," she noted. And that spirit is clearly still within her today.
Her destiny was altered
At a relatively young age, Depp knew what career path she wanted to pursue: music. "I wanted to become a recording engineer and became a regular fixture at Criteria Studios [now Hit Factory]," she recalled in an interview with the Miami Herald. So, there was no question that she loved music and wanted to make that her raison d'etre, for sure.
Alas, that was not the path she ended up taking due to an accident that changed her life forever. "One day I went target shooting and lost 80 percent of the hearing in my left ear due to not wearing the proper ear protection," she continued. It was then that she knew pursuing a career in music was off of the table for good, so she had to go in another direction. That sounds like it was both traumatic and heartbreaking for her. Who knows what could have been?
Getting hitched
Maybe the romance between Lori and Johnny Depp was doomed from the start, as they were really young when they tied the knot — perhaps too young. Depp was just 20, according to The Telegraph, which made Lori 26, as she's about six years his senior. The pair met in South Florida, where they both lived, and where Johnny played music with his '80s garage band The Kids, as noted by the Miami Herald. In 1983, they tied the knot, linking them forever in the eyes of the law.
Perhaps "until death do us part" wasn't in the vows, as the couple's marriage didn't last very long at all. Just a few years later in 1985, the Depps split up for good and went their separate ways. Fortunately, Lori doesn't seem too mad about the whole thing, given her willingness to discuss her famous ex with the press. So, we can assume the split was, for the most part, pretty amicable.
With a little help from her friends
With her career in the music industry no longer an option, Lori Depp had to figure out what she would do to earn her bread and butter. Drawing on her artistic sensibilities, she decided to bust out her brushes and mirrors. "I started doing makeup for up-and-coming photographers and then began getting paying jobs," she shared in an interview with the Miami Herald. Turns out this was the right move for her. "I eventually got an agent at a high-profile artists' agency in Los Angeles and started working nonstop," she noted. And thus, her career, which has spanned over three decades, was born.
Depp credits some of her famous friends for giving her the boost she needed to succeed as a makeup artist. "My career as a professional make-up artist began with the help of my very good (and greatly talented) friends, Adam Ant and Christina Applegate," she wrote on her website. "Thanks to them, I was able to move quickly from amateur to professional." Talk about friends in high places!
She has her own lip gloss line
In 2015, Lori Depp took an entrepreneurial leap and started her own line of lip glosses, as reported by the Miami Herald. The makeup line, aptly named Serendeppity (see what she did there?), features a variety of different colors that she named after characters in her favorite movies or people she looks up to. "I love the idea behind make-up and having fun with it," she wrote on her website. "Be you or be your 'character,' the choice is yours." Sounds like she had a lot of fun with it!
That year, Depp also shared some of her makeup wisdom with the world. "If it doesn't look good on you, don't do it," she advised in an interview with Bustle. "But if it looks good on you, no matter when it's from, then do it." That's some sage advice right there. Don't be afraid of the blue eye shadow when it works for you.
Depp has worked as a makeup artist on a few TV shows and movies, too, according to her IMDb page. She knows how to stay busy!
Defending Johnny
One of the messier divorces to have gone down in Tinseltown was the break between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in 2016. Heard accused Depp of abusive behavior, which included throwing a cell phone at her face "with extreme force," according to The Guardian. The former couple eventually settled the case.
One of the people to come out in defense of Johnny was Lori, who believed that he wasn't capable of hurting anyone, as reported by TMZ. She added that, during their relationship, not only did he never get physical with her but he also never even raised his voice. On top of that, she called him a "soft person" who loved animals, and she said he was more loving with their dog than the bulk of parents are with their children.
TMZ added that Lori and Johnny are still friends with one another and noted that Lori called Johnny to offer her condolences when his mother passed away.
This cause is near and dear to her heart
If you stroll over to Lori Depp's Instagram page, one thing becomes apparent right away: She's a complete and utter dog person, through and through. For one, she has pooches of her own, and she fawns over them just as ridiculously as, well, we all do. Additionally, Depp goes beyond, in that she fosters dogs and advocates to help them find forever homes, sparing them the trauma of captivity. Man, that definitely tugs at the heartstrings!
Depp also worked with her sister, photographer Suzanne Allison, on a coffee table book about dogs that published in 2016. The aptly named Gimme Shelter is a collection of photographs of celebs with their pets, including Steven Tyler, Courteney Cox, Alice Cooper, and Demi Moore, just to name a few. And guess who wrote the foreword? That would be Johnny Depp — nice of him to lend his name to the project.
A portion of the proceeds went to several different nonprofits that benefit animals, according to the book's website.
The Baby Shoes Project
On top of being a makeup artist, Lori Depp seized another opportunity to flex her creative muscles — this time in the form of a short story.
She wrote a piece of flash fiction that was published in a fiction anthology entitled For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn, edited by Hache L. Jones. The book, which was published in February 2017, collected stories from 85 different writers in 13 countries from around the world. Each story, which is a response to the prompt in the title, is no more than 500 words in length — that's pretty short, but that's kind of the point.
Depp did more than just have a story featured, though. "Even more exciting (for me at least), I was asked to write the foreword," she wrote in a post on her Facebook page. "I'm no writer, but I gave it a shot." Sounds pretty fascinating!
Tweeting back at Trump
These days, it seems like you can't sign onto social media without entering a political firestorm, maybe even unfriending your grandmother in the process. To that end, Johnny Depp's first wife, Lori Depp, is not the least bit shy about expressing her political beliefs online. So, you won't have to spend much time on her Twitter feed to learn that is strongly against the politics of the Trump administration. In fact, she often tweets directly at President Donald Trump himself, expressing her blatant objections to him and his policies.
For example, on one occasion, Depp called for her followers to do the same, inviting them to tweet the president's infamous Access Hollywood words back to him (you know, the ones about grabbing women by their genitals). She has also called Trump a "f***ing idiot" and has admitted to her followers, "I just want to punch him." Clearly, Depp speaks her mind.