Celebrities Who Covered Up (Or Removed) Tattoos Dedicated To Their Exes

It’s been over two decades since Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder broke off their engagement in 1993, yet the story of “Winona Forever” remains the number one example of why someone should think twice before getting a tattoo in honor of their lover. Despite being the butt of more than a few jokes, Depp kept the tat for a full year before removing the last two letters of the actress’s name as a clever play on words. History has repeated itself for the thespian in recent months as a result of his messy separation from actress Amber Heard. Where his knuckles once read “Slim,” a nickname for Heard, is now the phrase “scum,” leading some to deduce that it’s a pointed message toward his latest ex.

It wouldn’t be a proper telling of the ballad of Angelina Jolie without mentioning her brief, whirlwind marriage with Hollywood bad boy Billy Bob Thornton. In addition to the pair carrying a vial of each other’s blood around their necks during their three year relationship, Jolie had a pretty sizable Chinese dragon stamped onto her left arm along with her then-husband’s name just below. These days, the former site of Billy’s dragon now contains a set of coordinates representing the birth places of Jolie’s six children, as well as the birthplace coordinates of her recent ex, Brad Pitt.

It’s pretty hard to move past a break up when your heart or your tattoo heart has the guy’s name written all over it. Such was the dilemma when actress Melanie Griffith split up with her third husband Antonio Banderas in 2015. Her solution was a slow but steady process of laser treatments to remove the homage from her arm entirely. Despite ending their marriage of nearly 20 years, the two appear to be amicably coparenting their daughter Stella, and have shared nothing but warm wishes with one another post-split.

Ankle tats are notorious for being particularly painful, so teenage cosmetics mogul Kylie Jenner must have really meant business when she decided to change her lower case “t” to “LA” as a way to solidify her split from rapper Tyga in April of 2017. The change came about a month after Jenner and current beaux Travis Scott got matching butterfly tattoos.

The union between model Heidi Klum and singer Seal seemed like it was destined to last forever. Sadly, the power couple divorced after seven years. About a year later, Klum decided to remove a portion of her forearm tattoo that she got to celebrate their four-year anniversary. The only remaining bits are the initials of their three children just above where his name used to be.

In January of 2012, Longoria began the painful process of removing three tattoos dedicated to her ex, basketball player Tony Parker. She had his jersey number tattooed on her neck, their wedding date on her wrist, and Parker's initials in an undisclosed location. Longoria posted Snapchat and Instagram stories documenting the experience where she warned younger viewers that getting a tattoo may hurt, but that it “hurts... ten times worse getting it off."