|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
Johnny Depp: My family is my treasure
By CHRISSY ILLEY - More by this author »
Last updated at 15:57pm on 18th May 2007
Daily Mail
In a highly personal interview, Johnny Depp explains why playing the pirate Captain Jack Sparrow has helped him finally find the reason he wants to live.
When I first met Johnny Depp, he was not bankable, certainly not box-office gold. He ticked all the bad boy boxes. Edgy, dark, an outsider who was attracted to the strangely gothic - the sad-eyed Edward Scissorhands, the transvestite director Ed Wood, the drug dealer in Blow.
He ripped up hotel rooms, and when the paparazzi lurked outside the Mirabelle restaurant in London to get a shot of his girlfriend Vanessa Paradis's pregnant tummy, he walloped them with a plank of wood.
Depp says that the birth of his daughter Lily-Rose, now seven, 'was not only the greatest thing that's ever happened - it's the only thing that's ever happened to me'
It was that pregnant tummy that changed everything. It caused a seismic shift.
When Depp became a dad, he became the person he always wanted to be: calm, happy, loving and loved.
That manifested itself in his most iconic role: Jack Sparrow in the blockbuster trilogy Pirates Of The Caribbean, the final instalment of which -Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End - opens here next Thursday.
The character he created took its inspiration from raddled Keith Richards and cartoon skunk sexpot Pepe Le Pew: mischievous rather than villainous, all glittering gold teeth and high-polished camp.
When we meet this time, in a sterile hotel room in Los Angeles, Depp's charisma and teeth sparkle.
He's still filming a few scenes for Pirates, and the teeth are still on, but now they look as if they belong.
Johnny Depp, the man, has merged with Jack Sparrow, the character.
He is no longer miserable, dark, anaesthetised with drugs. He is bright, sparky and children-friendly.
Jack Sparrow has been the greatest gift. It's hard to remember when Johnny was the outsider.
He's wearing horn-rimmed glasses today and a battered felt trilby.
He is a man who seems totally comfortable in his own skin, not the broody Depp of years ago, but full of warmth.
Of his being cast in the first Pirates five years ago, he says: "I took a lot of heat from Disney and the people that write the cheques, but I did feel strongly that I was heading in the right direction, that my take on Captain Jack was who he should be."
At the time, he was unsure of the commercial potential of what was to become a new Disney treasure chest.
The first film grossed more than $1 billion and became one of the biggest money-making films of all time.
He was immediately signed on for two more, reportedly for $37 million.
The quirky, unbankable one has turned it all around. He's hit the jackpot. And that's not all.
He was nominated for an Oscar for playing Jack Sparrow.
Rarely does a film so commercially successful garner critical acclaim and get Oscar nominated.
Having tasted mainstream success for the first time, he found himself up for more.
Next was J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland - a role not of darkness but of gentleness.
A man who was intrigued by a widow and her young boys and inspired to write Peter Pan about one of them.
After that it was Willy Wonka in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Both are, of course, family-safe.
Or, as he puts it: "It's nice to do a film that hopefully my kids will enjoy. They are my foundation."
It's also difficult, looking at Depp the family man, to remember Johnny the serial fiance;. When he was with a woman, he was all about being only with that woman.
When he had a relationship with Winona Ryder, he had her name tattooed on his arm.
Once it was over, he had it changed to "Wino Forever".
Then, of course, there was his turbulent on-off relationship with Kate Moss.
Sometimes he was filling her hotel room with daisies, other times he was throwing the television out of the hotel window.
Now, though, he's marketing gold and he is clear and profound about what caused this transformation: "Meeting Vanessa and fatherhood."
Depp says that the birth of his daughter Lily-Rose, now seven, "was not only the greatest thing that's ever happened - it's the only thing that's ever happened to me.
"I helped give our daughter life and I feel she gave me life.
"Suddenly, you meet your reason to live, meet the future. It was like my birth in a way. I was born that day."
Dramatic words, but he says them almost in a whisper. He has stopped drinking spirits and taking drugs.
"I quit drinking spirits because I couldn't stop.
"I would just keep going until a black screen came down, where you can't see anything any more.
"Trying to numb and medicate myself was never about recreation, it was existing without living.
"Now I have a solid foundation to stand on."
His eyes twinkle some more when he talks about his kids, Lily-Rose and five-year-old Jack.
"They make me happy. Simple, fun things, me and my son zooming around in little cars or making up absurd stories about Barbie dolls who get obsessed about peanut butter."
One can guess at how traumatised he must have been in February when his beloved Lily-Rose was stricken with what is believed to have been E.coli poisoning.
She was taken to hospital in London and there were nine days when the family kept vigil at her bedside.
"It gave us a great scare. It was a very bumpy patch, but she has come through it beautifully and she is now as healthy as she always was."
He is so devoted to Vanessa that even a screen kiss with co-star Keira Knightley upset him.
He says he could never love anybody else.
"I'm old fashioned. It's my Kentucky mentality -seems I can't escape it after all."
Despite his reputation, pre-Vanessa, as a man who loved women, Depp was never a womaniser.
His relationships were long and monogamous, even if some of them were, to put it mildly, tumultuous.
His relationship with Kate Moss in the mid-Nineties was intense and passionate, but not quite as in the legends.
He denies the story about filling a bath with champagne at the Portobello Hotel in which he and Moss supposedly bathed.
"I wish it was true," he says, with a sad little smile.
He is clearly uneasy talking about Kate, whom he's not spoken to since they split up.
One feels this is more out of loyalty to Paradis than lack of love for Moss.
"I was not good for Kate," he says. "But she's a strong girl and a great girl and very smart."
He says he was shocked at her treatment by newspapers, who nicknamed her Cocaine Kate.
"Dragging her through the mud like that - they are weird and two-faced.
"Let her be! I have never met Pete Doherty, but I think he has talent and he and Kate could be great together.
"She's got a great brain on her and she's a good mummy."
Depp met Paradis, whom he touchingly refers to as "my girl" - possibly the only man in the world who could use this term of endearment without it sounding ridiculous - in France in 1998.
He was filming the Roman Polanski movie The Ninth Gate at the time.
It was one of those instant connections.
"You have this feeling - I can't really explain what it was, but I had it when I met Vanessa.
I saw her across a room and I thought: "What's happening to me?"
"I had no way of knowing how great a person she was or how great a mother she would be.
"I can remember thinking the last thing in the world I wanted was a relationship, but it was impossible to escape. I was gone."
Paradis, despite her pop star background and having a hit with Joe Le Taxi when she was 14, came from a very stable, sensible background.
She still looks like a luscious Lolita, all angular cheekbones and big eyes.
She is now 33, but has always said she wanted to be a mother, and there's nothing that makes her happier than carrying a child.
Which brings us back to that block of wood and the paparazzi. Depp doesn't even attempt to look contrite.
"I told them: 'I know the photograph you want and you're not going to get it! I don't want to be a novelty tonight.'
"They were rude and said: 'We are going to get the picture!"
"Vanessa got in the car and they were trying to pull the door open.
"There was a block of wood on the ground, so I grabbed it and smacked the hand of the guy who was trying to open the car door."
Johnny was born in Owensboro, Kentucky and had a peripatetic childhood.
The family moved to Florida and shifted more than a dozen times between motels and homes.
His high school career was colourful - he was once suspended for mooning at his gym teacher - and he dropped out at 15.
"I felt completely and utterly confused by everything that was going on around me," he admits.
"I always wanted to know why, and it really annoyed the teachers."
That year, his parents split up.
"I was pretty much ready to leave myself and did so not long after that.
"So on the one hand it was a release, and on the other it was a radical change for Mom and she got very ill.
"There was never any time for me, as a kid, to feel bad at the parents splitting up because the kid had to go straight to the mom and look after her and make sure she was OK.
"There was never any time for mourning the loss of family."
Now he has found the family he missed for so long.
He still has a base in the South of France, but has bought his mother a house next door to his Hollywood Hills home. Whatever was lost is now complete.
Depp says when growing up he used to love the Pirates Of The Caribbean ride at Disney World in Florida.
Now he enjoys taking his kids on it, too.
Meanwhile, in each Pirates film, his character has become more arch, more over the top.
At World's End features spectacular swashbuckling scenes - and a Captain Jack who is more comedic, and nimble, than ever.
A bit like the man himself. Somehow Captain Jack and Johnny Depp seem set to continue to evolve together, and perhaps they are not ready to let go of each other yet.
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
|
|
| fireontheplatter |
ahhhhh good for him...that over paid rich hollywood fucker
|
|
|
| fireontheplatter |
do you really think he gives a fuck about you |
|
|
| FotiniD |
quote:
fireontheplatter wrote:
ahhhhh good for him...that over paid rich hollywood fucker
Let me kindly remind you we're all here talking about a bunch of overpaid rich english fuckers, who, many would say, don't give a fuck about us either 
[Edited by FotiniD] |
|
|
| Brainbell Jangler |
Family is what it's all about. It's one thing that conservatives like Riffy, leftists like myself and libertarians like PDog can agree on. You discover your true capacity to love when your child is born. |
|
|
| kath |
quote:
Let me kindly remind you we're all here talking about a bunch of overpaid rich english fuckers, who, many would say, don't give a fuck about us either
excellent point. what an odd bunch of people WE are.......
 |
|
