Marilyn Manson and Evan Rachel Wood's Relationship Timeline Explained

If you were paying attention to new music videos circa 2007 and were unlucky enough to have seen the video for Marilyn Manson's "Heart-Shaped Glasses," then you likely remember the gross spectacle that it was. Years later, actress Evan Rachel Wood, who appeared in the video alongside her then-boyfriend Manson, said that what happened on that set amounted to rape.

Manson and Wood's relationship seemed icky to onlookers from the start. He was pushing 40 and she was a baby-faced actress who, for all intents and purposes, was a baby when they began dating: she was only 19 to Manson's 38. Even though their relationship ended in 2010, the two have been connected via various allegations and even a lawsuit.

Here's a look at their relationship timeline.

As his marriage to burlesque performer Dita Von Teese was crumbling, Manson met a teenager at a party, and they became friends. (Because that's what men pushing 40 do when they meet teenagers, right? Totally legit.)

According to Spin, after Manson and Von Teese ended things, his relationship with Wood turned romantic. “She’s nothing less than a muse,” he told the mag back in 2007.

Wood appeared in Manson's music video for "Heart-Shaped Glasses," which premiered in May 2007. After that, Wood and Manson were seen at different events together, like a movie premiere, an art gallery opening, a film festival, and a Led Zeppelin concert.

In November 2008, Wood told People that she and Manson had "both decided to take some time apart so we could concentrate on work." They reportedly briefly reconciled in February 2009 before trying again that December.

According to reports, Manson proposed to Wood while he was performing on stage during a concert in Paris in January 2010. But by August, they were donezo.

After having previously spoken in 2018 and 2019 about having been in an abusive relationship, Wood went into more detail in February 2021 when she wrote on Instagram that the "name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson." She said that he'd begun "grooming" her when she was a teen, going on to "horrifically [abuse]" her for years while also keeping her "brainwashed and manipulated into submission."

Manson denied the allegations as "horrible distortions of reality."

Wood's two-part March 2022 HBO documentary Phoenix Rising detailed her allegations against the rocker.

As The Guardian wrote about the doc: "Wood’s allegations are, to be clear, consistently horrifying. Among them: that Manson repeatedly drugged, manipulated and coerced her on the set of his 2007 music video Heart-Shaped Glasses and 'essentially raped' her on camera; that Manson controlled her eating, raped her in her sleep after he gave her a sleeping pill, tortured her with an electric shocking device, beat her with 'a Nazi whip from the Holocaust' while she was tied to a kneeler and fed her meth and other drugs without her knowledge."

The same month that Phoenix Rising was released, Manson filed a lawsuit against Wood and another woman named Ilma Gore for trying to destroy his career with "a campaign of malicious and unjustified attacks."

A judge dismissed the case in 2023, but TMZ reported in August 2024 that Manson was appealing. He included a copy of the FBI letter that he'd claimed Wood forged. He also questioned why the court hadn't considered that a previous accuser had recanted her allegations after claiming Wood pressured her into make accusations.

Wood's lawyer Michael Kump said in a statement provided to Distractify of Manson's appeal: "Warner’s appeal simply rehashes the same meritless claims which the trial court threw out. As Ms. Wood testified under oath, she did not fabricate or forge the FBI letter."