Johnny Depp and Joelle Rich's fling fizzles out as actor's friend claims it's not a 'committed love affair'
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: It has been rumored that actor Johnny Depp's most recent relationship ended just a few short months after it started following his legal dispute with his ex-wife Amber Heard. Depp, 59, was dating mother-of-two Joelle Rich, 37, a lawyer from London.
The two were photographed exchanging loving glances and Rich was seen driving to court with Depp during his defamation trial in Fairfax, Virginia. They reportedly had "off-the-scale chemistry" when the relationship was first revealed in October, according to the Daily Mail. However, the actor was not to be seen when Rich attended a family wedding in Ibiza last weekend. As a result, sources in New York believe that the couple's relationship is on the rocks and may have already ended. A friend of Depp reportedly told Daily Mail, “Are they still an item? We are not talking about a normal couple here. It’s not a big, stable, committed love affair and I’m not sure that it ever was.”
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“I don’t know if they are together in any way at this point. Certainly, I don’t believe it is a serious romantic relationship, or even an exclusive one,” they said. The source added, “Firstly, he has just come out of a massive legal battle [with ex-wife Amber Heard], so who would want to commit after that? It has been an extremely traumatic period for him. Secondly, he’s Johnny Depp and I don’t think a standard committed relationship is going to be his thing.”
Rich's pals in London claim that she is still working on getting a divorce from her husband Jonathan. Joelle and Jonathan share a $1.6 million mansion in North London with their two children. They got hitched in 2011. Rich reportedly makes around $280,000 a year as a partner at a UK law firm called Schillings.
Rich first encountered Depp in 2018 when her firm was recruited to file a libel lawsuit against The Sun after the newspaper called Depp a "wife-beater". Although he lost his libel case, everything went in his favor in the defamation trial. Heard was forced to pay him £9.2 million ($10.30 million) in damages which was a humiliating end to the situation.
Following the defamation trial in which Depp sued Heard, the actor spent a few months in France filming 'Jeanne du Barry', a French-language movie in which he plays Louis XV. Since the filming concluded in October, Depp has resumed his music career, performing in the US with guitar legend Jeff Beck and preparing for a UK tour with Alice Cooper in the supergroup Hollywood Vampires. According to Law Society regulations, a solicitor-client relationship is permitted as long as there is no conflict of interest and there is no evidence of such a conflict in this case.
