The year started off swell, with the oft-cited Harris Poll letting it be known in late January that Depp was America's second-favorite movie star, behind only Tom Hanks. Nothing to argue with there. Depp had taken the title in 2011 and 2012, but was No. 4 in 2015. So his stock was back on the rise. He had gotten strong reviews for playing murderous mobster Whitey Bulger in 2015's Black Mass and 2016 held promises of a windfall with the sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass due in theaters.

At the same time, however, word was getting around that all was far from fine in his marriage to Amber Heard. He had married the actress in February 2015, a strange turn of events for those who wondered why he took that step, considering he had never officially married Vanessa Paradis, the mother of his two children and partner for almost 14 years. (Their split back in 2012 wasn't exactly a high point for Depp popularity, with even fans who spent years wishing they were Paradis not caring for the breakup of a family. And then he rebounds with someone 23 years his junior? Quelle horreur! Très cliché!)

"I try not to react to the horrible misrepresentation of our lives, but it is strange, and hard," Heard said in the December 2015 issue of Marie Claire about the ever-hovering rumors that they were having marital troubles.

And they were hanging in there, with Depp telling E! News about his wife at the November 2015 premiere of The Danish Girl, "She's a voracious reader as I have been, so we connected on that as well and she's kind of brilliant and beautiful. I'm a lucky man."