After
being a cool dude for most of his life Johnny Depp has come of
age, helped by fatherhood, an ongoing relationship with French
actress and singer Vanessa Paradis, and a new life Paris for the
last two years.
Being an exile suits someone who feels a perennial
outsider.
He has always
had a struggle to be taken at more than face value. The almond
brown eyes, the part-Cherokee cheekbones and the sensuous lips
made Johnny Depp a gorgeous pouting icon for a generation of
teeny boppers. He's rather
relieved that such onerous responsibilities are over. He's been
out of the US media glare for the last couple of years,
exchanging it for the more muted attention he receives in France
where's he's been living with his amour Vanessa Paradis, the
actress and singer. Together they have a baby girl Lily-Rose
Melody who's 21 months and upon whom he dotes with a
fervour.
Dressed down in
teeshirt and jeans, and looking a tad dishevelled, he says:
"That's the interesting thing about becoming a father. Suddenly
you universally have somehting in common with other people. I
can be sitting next to a very straight, humourless businessman
or stockbroker type on an aeroplane and we'll just start talking
about kids. And that conversation last three or four
hours."
Depp, 37, almost
seems the cliche of the proud dad. Yes, he does have the
polaroid snaps of Lily-Rose in his wallet and will whip them out
at the slightest encouragement. It may be too much information
for the faint-hearted but he cut the umbilical cord when she was
born.
He has shouldered responsibilities with the
same enthusiasm and thoroughness that he invests in his roles.
"It's had a really radical effect on me," he says reflectively.
"It's all kinds of these profound things crashing on you when
your child arrives into the world. It's like you've met your
reason to live."
Whereas
he and Vanessa have been embraced into the fold of French
celebrity - he has received special César honour (the Gallic
equivalent of the Oscars) - they are not subject any more to the
same kind of relentless scrutiny that was evident when they
started their relationship. Already she has voiced the view she
would like more - and true to her word the couple are expecting
their second child in the autumn.
Depp, at 36, always was a rebel waiting to
be tamed as well as being a self-confessed francophile. They
managed to keep their trysts secret until the ceremony for the
Césars just over two years ago. Depp was given an honorary award
by the actor Pascal Greggory who divulged the couple's interest
in each other - thereby making them national property times
two.
They've been
together since he left Kate Moss. The decision to start a family
was "without question the greatest thing I've done in my
life".
Before their first-born made her appearance
he dutifully scoured the Côte d'Azur to seek out a property,
helped by Paradis's father, an interior design consultant who
knows the area well.
Four million francs or £500,000 later, their love nest as
the scandal sheets insisted on styling it, at Saint Aygulf, near
Saint Tropez, with stuning views over the sea, was ready and
waiting. The only trouble was that the paparazzi kept falling
out of the trees, and now they tend to prefer the anonymity of
their £1million apartment in Paris or occasionally Depp's other
home in Los Angeles.
The
couple chose the location of their seaside abode because it's
where they first spent romantic interludes before the rest of
the world cottoned on to the relationship. Depp and Paradis who
met at a dinner in Paris given by mutual friends, have been used
to toing and froing in private jets and limos just to be
together.
Whereas he is
more open about divulging details of their life together she is
more reticent. She once told me: "There's no reason I should
share my private life with the whole world. I don't answer
personal questions. I'll do interviews to promote a particular
film, that's all. There will always be rumours about me and
Johnny. Everytime a papparazzi takes a picture of him and some
girl he is supposed to be with her. That doesn't matter to me. I
know who he is and what we have, and I'm secure with that. I
know him and I know us, and nothing anyone says can change
that."
Depp has come a
long way since the latter half of the Eighties when he starred
in 21 Jump Street, a television cop show which turned him into a
Stateside idol. The show was never seen in the UK except on
satellite. He was given the opportunity to play on his teen-idol
image in 1990 with John Waters' Cry-Baby (1990), a pastiche of
Fifties youth movies, and then there was Tim Burton's Edward
Scissorhands (1991), in which he played the spike-fingered boy
robot. Both films allowed him to play what were fey and
vulnerble creatures.
They helped him knotch up his career status.
He also became famous for going out with Winona Ryder,
and also having Winona forever tatooed on his right arm
(subsquently removed). Then he became famous for not going out
with Ms Ryder after they split up.
His choices have always been quirky and off
the war. He made cult Yugoslav director Emir Kusturica's first
American film Arizona Dream (1993), and then he made Lasse
Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), as a small-town
boy taking care of his family. Then he gave the performance of
his career as an angora-wearing transvestite director in
Burton's Ed Wood (1994) and stayed with the same director for
Sleepy Hollow (1999). There was also his weirdo in Benny &
Joon (1993), and bemasked as the great romantic in Don Juan De
marco (1995). Of late his work
has been more than credible with Roman Polanski's Ninth Gate,
The (1999) and Sally Potter's Man Who Cried, The
(2000).
Depp has never
been one of those actors whose name can greenlight a 100 million
dollar blockbuster, and he has no desire to be except on
reflection he wouldn't mind a slice of the profits. "It's fun to
imagine what you could do with that kind of money. I could buy
that island I've wanted to buy all my life, and live there with
my family. Or I could buy some great piece of art that's just
going to feed my eyes every day. It's fun to toy with the notion
of that, and it is very tempting because money, unfortunately is
freedom in today's world."
Every time he returns to LA he realises exactly why he's
no longer living there. "I'll never understand the animal, the
machine of Hollywood business. And I don't want to understand
it. It's like joining a club, a clique just because everyone
else is in it. You don't have any particular interest in it, and
it has nothing to do with who you are as a person. You just join
it because it's the thing to do. The quality of life is so
different in France. There is the possibility of living a simple
life. I would never contemplate raising my daughter in LA. I
would never raise any child there."
Depp manages to achieve a low profile fairly
effortlessly. He hopped unnoticed on to a Eurostar from Paris
recently for a round of interviews in London and caused no great
stir. He was never in the loop so being out it has not affected
the choices he is offered. He reteamed with Hallstrom for
Chocolat (2000), as the long-haired gypsy who eats lots of
sweets and smooches Juliette Binoche which certainly won't do
his cred any harm. And he's been working in Prague on From Hell
(2001), an adaption of Alan Moore's novel about Jack the Ripper.
During his London foray he followed the footsteps of The Ripper
for two hours walking around the East End as part of his
research.
He and Vanessa
were due to take part in Terry Gilliam 48 million dollar Man Who
Killed Don Quixote, The (2001) in which a modern-day advertising
executive is whisked back to 17th-century Spain where he is
mistaken for Cervantes' hero.
But calamity struck when Gilliam's Quixote, Jean
Rochefort, suffered a double disc hernia, with sources claiming
that the movie is "on hold" awaiting a decision from the
completion bond company as to its future Depp will be seen shortly playing George
Jung, a key player in the 1970s cocaine-trafficking boom, in a
fact-based drama Blow (2001), from director-producer Ted Demme.
Depp's performance alongside penélope Cruz and Ray Liotta, is
impressive, playing both the middle-aged Jung pulling one last
cocaine megadeal, before rewinding to his youth in Fifties
Boston. Depp's ageing process is meticulous.
He admits with a slightly bemused air that
he never wanted to be a film star. Like most of his generation
his dream was to be in a rock-band.
The great grandson of a full blooded
Cherokee, he was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, which he describes
as "the barbecue capital of the world." He grew up in Miramar,
southern Florida, the youngest of four children. He was named
after his father John, a civil engineer.
When his parents split up, he stayed with
his mother Betty Sue. When he was 12 he got his first guitar,
and by 16 he was playing in a band called The Kids who used to
support the likes of Iggy Pop and the Ramones when they came to
play in Florida in the late Seventies.
In the early Eighties, the Kids went to Los
Angeles in search of that elusive record deal. It didn't happen,
but Depp met and married Lori Anne Allison, and spent a couple
of years drifting. They divorced a couple of years later, but
through his ex-wife he was introduced to Nicolas Cage who in
turn sent him to his agent. That resulted in an audition which
provided a part in Nightmare on Elm Street as the doomed
boyfriend who was eaten alive halfway through the
film.
During his teeny
bopper days he received more than 10,000 letters a month, mainly
from girls containing declarations of undying love - and also
more upfront propositions. At least domesticity with Paradis has
put a stop to that.
Depp
accepts that he has become rather a specialist in portraying
lost souls - even Jung (Blow (2001)) fits the pattern - or
vulnerable innocents. "I don't see it as limiting myself," he
says, " because I am doing things that are true to me. The only
thing I have a problem with is being
labelled."
Cinema.com,
2001
