Source:
USA Weekend, July 6 2003
An
American in Paris
By Gregory
Katz
We
trekked to France tracking down the always offbeat Johnny Depp
to see if family life has settled him down -- or if he's still
living on the edge.
Imagine a
doting dad playing Barbies on the floor with his 4-year-old
daughter while he gives his baby boy a bottle early on a Sunday
morning. Now move the scene to a farmhouse in the south of
France, picture the father as a somewhat disheveled but darkly
handsome long-haired man with mysterious gold caps on his teeth,
and you have a glimpse into the life of daddy Johnny
Depp.
But the
former teen heartthrob -- remember "21 Jump Street"? -- isn't
quite your average father. At 40, Depp loves to play loud
electric guitar, wears clothes that could use a cleaning,
occasionally orders $18,000 bottles of wine in restaurants, and
pals around with Rolling Stones bad boys Keith Richards and Ron
Wood.
Still,
cultivating his domestic side is something of a change for the
actor and star of the Disney epic "Pirates of the Caribbean: The
Curse of the Black Pearl", which opens Wednesday. These days,
Depp's focus is squarely on girlfriend Vanessa Paradis, 30, a
beautiful French actress and pop singer, and their two children,
Lily-Rose and Jack. He says he wants to marry Paradis when their
kids are old enough to enjoy it, preferably at a three-day
"gypsy wedding." Making it legal would only seem fitting to a
father so smitten with his children that he writes off the years
before their birth -- when he was dating actress Winona Ryder
and model Kate Moss and starring in a string of strong, offbeat
movie roles -- as a total waste of time.
"I literally
feel as though I didn't have a life before," says Depp, sitting
in an elegant bar in Paris wearing a rumpled dark suit and
smoking a homemade cigarette that would get him tossed out of
most establishments in the United States. "It was like existing,
but not living. When you have a baby, it's like a veil is lifted
suddenly. [Before,] I did stuff and I smiled and I laughed, but
it's like I didn't experience it until I had kids. You can't
imagine the degree of joy and love and life that's available
until you have a kid. I just didn't get it."
Depp seems
to have outrun his demons. The early line on his career held
that he was bound for self-destruction. He was expected to date
one too many supermodels, develop a drinking or drug problem,
destroy too many hotel rooms, attack too many paparazzi,
alienate one too many producers and end up as a better-looking
version of Mickey Rourke, unable to find meaningful work.
Instead he
fell in love, first with Paradis and then with his adopted
country. He says he is shocked by the gun violence in American
schools and feels it is far safer raising a family in
France.
"I was very
lucky that something steered me to France back in '98," he says
of his decision to make a movie with Oscar-winning director
Roman Polanski in 1998. "I love America -- I love going back,
seeing my family and friends -- but it's wonderful to get back
to France and be living in a tiny village with nothing around.
There is still the possibility to live a simple life. You can go
to the market, walk about, buy fruits and vegetables -- the
things they did 100 and 200 years ago. We have moments when
we're sitting in our house and our kids are playing, and we look
at one another and think, 'Thank God we escaped.' "
Depp comes
from a poor rural family (he alternately refers to them as
"hillbillies" and "white trash"), which makes his rise to
international stardom even more unlikely. He moved from Kentucky
to Florida when he was 5; once in Florida, his family moved "at
least" 30 times in 10 years, for no particular reason, he says,
except to satisfy his mom's wanderlust. (Depp was raised
primarily by his mother after his parents divorced when he was
15.) "To this day," he says, "when I pack a bag, it triggers
some kind of trauma."
A product of
the rural South who spent many years in Hollywood, Depp never
really felt at home until he moved to France. He rejects the
view that there has been a surge of anti-Americanism there
because of opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, and he
believes the French people have behaved in a dignified manner
while some Americans have resorted to "schoolyard tactics" by
renaming French fries "freedom fries."
"That was so
revealing, that grown men sat around and came up with that
idea," he says of the freedom fries initiative. "It was tragic
and embarrassing. At the same time, I was happy it was exposed,
and people knew that a bunch of congressmen -- big people, the
upper-drawer people -- made that decision."
He also was
not convinced by the Bush administration's rationale for the
war. He says the real reason was America's economic interests.
"I saw these American kids being shipped off to war, and I was
looking at their faces and thinking, 'They're not ready for it,'
" he says. "Is anybody ever ready for it? You're thinking about
where they're going, what they're getting into. What's it really
all about? It's about dough; it's about money. That's
ugly."
Depp used to scorn the Hollywood
star-making machine and rail about the corrupt nature of the
film business. But that harsh talk and superior attitude has
faded. He realizes the absurdity of criticizing an industry that
lets him live as he pleases in a French farmhouse near swanky
St. Tropez and choose which roles he wants to play. "Pirates of
the Caribbean" is the first in a sudden run of movies for Depp,
including the modern-day Western "Once Upon a Time in Mexico"
with Antonio Banderas, out in September, and the drama J.M.
Barrie's "Neverland" with Kate Winslet, to be released next
spring.
"It's a
terrific job, and I'm very thankful to still get gigs," he says,
still sporting the gold dental work on display for his role as
Capt. Jack Sparrow in "Pirates". "There were a number of years
when I took offense to Hollywood, when I took it all so
seriously. But it doesn't bother me too much anymore. I
understand it now pretty much, and I don't play it. If I play, I
want to play on my terms."
That means
having Hollywood come to him, not the other way around. When
heavyweight producer Jerry Bruckheimer wanted Depp to star in
"Pirates", he made a special trip to Paris to recruit him,
because he saw Depp's screen presence as a way to broaden the
film's appeal beyond young moviegoers naturally drawn to a
pirate flick.
"He makes
this movie more offbeat," Bruckheimer says. "He wanted to play
Jack Sparrow as half-baked, out at sea too long, drinking too
much, but very smart underneath it all. And he's very visual; he
created the look of the character."
By playing a
Disney swashbuckler, Depp hopes to add a summer blockbuster to
his long list of smaller films. "It's up to the public to decide
whether to make it commercial," he says.
And there is another aspect of the movie
that pleases Depp: He can show it to his kids. "They should get
a kick out of it," he says.
Gregory Katz is
Europe bureau chief of "The Dallas Morning News". He also has
written for "Esquire" and
"GQ".
