DEPP CHARGE
Despite his boyish good looks, expop star girlfriend and reputation for trashing hotel rooms, Johnny Depp is far from being your typical movie star. To the 40- year-old’s credit, he has consistently turned down the lead in box-office certainties such as Speed, Legends of the Fall and Interview With a Vampire in favour of quirkier movies like Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Now, however, with an Oscar nomination under his belt thanks to his hilariously camp performance as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, Depp has finally proved himself to be a bankable name as well as very special talent.
Two facts that will no doubt be underlined by his role as Willy Wonka in the forthcoming movie Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. But just don’t expect him to hob-knob in Beverley Hills because when the filming is done he’d much rather relax at his home in the South of France with his family.
These days, Depp may well prefer playing with his kids than playing the star but that wasn’t always the case. Having dropped out of school when he was just 17 and got his first acting break in the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street, the young actor soon developed a reputation for being a serial heart breaker. A fact that he now believes stemmed from his parents’ divorce and his own displaced childhood as one of four siblings born in Kentucky; the family had moved 30 times by the time he turned 16.
After getting a running part in the TV series 21 Jump Street as a pretty boy cop, his early marriage to make-up artist Lori- Anne Allison broke up and the star was linked with a string of beautiful women. He became engaged to Jennifer Grey then Winona Ryder and even wore a ‘Winona Forever’ tattoo on his arm. There was a much publicised relationship with Sherilyn Fenn and then there was that fantastic tale about Depp, Kate Moss and a bath of champagne. If you haven’t already heard it, the story goes that they once filled the bath in their hotel room with Kruger and went out for dinner. When they returned, they discovered that a maid had pulled the plug, believing it to be dirty water. Today Depp coyly denies it ever happened – but, nevertheless, admits it was the sort of thing he could have done.
Everything changed though when he met Vanessa Paradis while preparing for his role in Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate in Paris. Depp, who not long before had split up with
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This review from FQ MAGAZINE January/February 2005
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He may be Hollywood’s
hottest property but these
days Johnny Depp is far more
concerned about living the
family life than the high life
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supermodel Kate Moss, fell for the Lolita-like singer, who had a hit with Joe le Taxi in the mid-1980s. Since then she has appeared in films with Gerard Depardieu and Jean-Paul Belmondo, and her past boyfriends include rock star Lenny Kravitz. Within just a few months of knowing each other they bought a country home near St Tropez and then came together to England for the filming of Sleepy Hollow. While in London, Depp had his notorious clash with a group of paparazzi, allegedly attacking them with a piece of wood. “It wasn’t because I wanted to get into a rumble with someone,” he says. “I was with Vanessa who was four months pregnant and I was protecting what was precious to me. We were celebrating the upcoming birth of our child and the photographers were very aggressive. I did what I felt I had to do against six guys and I don’t regret it – but that doesn’t mean that I’m a mean or violent person.” Paternity, however, has helped put everything into perspective. “It’s amazing,” he says, “finally to discover the reasons for being alive. It’s amazing topaced and the values are all to do with business,” he says. “If we lived there fulltime it wouldn’t be good for the children. It’s not healthy for children to be raised in the overexposed world of Los Angeles.”
Another bonus is that Lily-Rose and Jack are bilingual. Johnny says: “Lily-Rose speaks both languages. She picked up English in two months. It was incredible. Jack has a primitive vocabulary.”
But its not just the kids that have appreciated the change in scenery.
“France was very welcoming to me and it gave me the opportunity to get back something I thought was lost forever. The possibility of leading a simple life: being a dad and driving down to the market to buy milk and going to the bar
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for a drink – and not being treated as a novelty.”
Starring roles in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and of course the Pirates of the Caribbean movies mean that he is fast becoming a favourite among young cinema-goers too. According to Depp, his children have made him all the more determined to create a body of work that they could be proud of. “I think that the inevitability of fatherhood has always affected the film choices I’ve made. I think all the choices of films, from Cry Baby to Edward Scissorhands, to whatever, I did with the idea that I would ultimately be able to leave them for someone. When I was approached to do Finding Neverland it was certainly a plus that it was a film I felt my kids could watch. Pirates Of The Caribbean was too, to some degree, and certainly Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.”
Despite his recent success, however,Despite his recent success, however, his own children will continue to mean far more to him than any big-budget film. “I wouldn’t take a film that meant I would be away from them for any substantial length of time,” says Depp. “I couldn’t take it. I would break down mentally. I’d just go mad. “If I’m away for three days, I go crazy. I start hallucinating.” The positive results of family life on Depp are there in technicolour for any cinema-goer to see. Clearly enjoying his work more than ever, he is starring in a flurry of new movies over the coming year. Most recently, there was Finding Neverland, in which he played J M Barrie – author of Peter Pan, hotly pursued by The Libertine in which he depicts another, very different type of writer, the lecherous Restoration poet John Wilmot. Then there’s The Rum Diary, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and eventually Pirates of the Caribbean 2 which is scheduled to screen in early 2006.
Yet despite the fact that the actor’s star is now shining brighter than ever before, he insists it’s his children, not the adulation from Hollywood that keeps him going. “The kiddies give me strength and perspective,” he says. “Certain things about Hollywood used to make me angry – now I go ‘Oh p*** off I’m going to play Barbies with my daughter’.”
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