by Johnny Depp
Playboy: You should be a baseball player.
Depp: Right. I could spit and grab my crotch. Like that lady who sang the national anthem—what’s her name?
Playboy: Roseanne.
Depp: I liked that. It was ballsy of her.
Playboy: So there’s an island on your Christmas list?
Depp: If there’s anything I really want, it’s privacy. It’s the island idea. You do get to where your money can help your family, and that’s a great thing. You can buy that wristwatch you want, too. But mostly you now have to pay for simplicity. You use your money to buy privacy because during most of your life you aren’t allowed to be normal. You’re on display, always looked at, which puts you at a disadvantage for the people looking at you know that it’s you. They say, “It’s you!” But you don’t know them. That’s bad for an actor because the most important thing you can do is observe people. And now you can’t because you’re the one being observed.
Playboy: Some of it must be enjoyable.
Depp: It’s very nice when people come up and say, “I really liked Don Juan DeMarco, please sign my napkin.” What gets to me is being watched, whispered about. Would you ever walk up to someone on the street and say, “Can I kiss you?” No, you’d get smacked. “Can I look inside your wallet?” “What size is your shoe?” “Can I have your hat?” Some requests are too fucking surreal. On Dead Man I was hanging out with Jarmusch and the crew, smoking cigarettes, and there was a guy lurking, checking me out. He looked normal enough, but his eyes were a little too open. So I knew he’d come up to me, which he did. “Hi, Johnny! Wanna go have a drink?” I said, “Thanks, I’m OK.” He said, “Listen, you could really help me out. My wife and I are separating, but I want to get back with her. She’s a big fan of yours.” He wanted me to go home with him and mediate his divorce. I wouldn’t, so he said he’d call her on the phone and we could talk it out. Now, that stuff goes too far. You want to say, “Can’t we just kiss? Could you just shove your tongue down my gullet and be done with it?”
Playboy: Some female fans love you enough to send you highly personal mementos.
Depp: Nude pictures in the mail, yes. Tons of them. Some are beautiful—nicely lit, black-and-white, mysterious. Some are out-and-out primitive. Then there are the pubes. I’ve gotten a lot of pubic hairs in the mail. I don’t save them. I guess you could get ritualistic about it, burn the pubes in a fire, but I’m not sure I want to touch them so I throw them away.
Playboy: How does it feel to be so handsome that women yank out their pubes for you?
Depp: I have no control over that. It’s demeaning when people talk about my looks. I think I usually look like shit, and most people would probably agree.
Playboy: You once said you feel more comfortable dining in a movie than in a restaurant.
Depp: Calmer, anyway. In a real restaurant you may notice people talking under their breath, staring. It builds up in your head and you want to run.
Playboy: Do you and Kate have techniques for avoiding bad scenes?
Depp: If we run into a gaggle of paparazzi I’ll avoid eye contact. I’ll also put on my sunglasses. That way they don’t get paid as much for the picture.
Playboy: Are you and Kate going to get married?
Depp: I love Kate more than anything. Certainly enough to marry her. But as far as putting our names on paper, making weird public vows that signify ownership—it’s not in the cards.
Playboy: Are you monogamous?
Depp: I’m very true. I wouldn’t hurt her and I expect she wouldn’t hurt me. Fidelity is important as long as it’s pure. But the moment it goes against your insides—if you want to be somewhere else, if she wants to dabble—then you need to make a change. I’m not sure any human being is made to be with one person forever and ever, amen. My own parents didn’t do it; my dad left when I was 15. And maybe in some of my public relationships…maybe I was trying to right the wrongs of my parents by creating a classic fairy-tale love. Trying to solve the fear of abandonment we all have. Anyway, it didn’t work. That’s not to say I didn’t love those people. I have been with some great girls and I certainly thought I loved them, though now I have my doubts. I felt something intense, but was it love? I don’t know. So now I can’t say I can love someone forever, or if anybody can.
Playboy: According to a recent story, you and Kate had set a wedding date. She wanted engraved invitations, but you wanted to send out a riddle so your friends would have to guess where to show up.
Depp: It’s fiction. I can guarantee you that if I woke up one day with a wild hair up my ass to get hitched, there wouldn’t be invitations. We’d run out and do it.
Playboy: What do you think when you see Kate’s picture on a billboard?
Depp: I think she’s beautiful. Calvin Klein is lucky to have her. If we’re apart and I see her picture I’ll miss her, not because of a billboard but because she’s always on my mind anyway.
Playboy: What’s something she does better than you?
Depp: Modeling. And she’s great at games. She beats the shit out of me at gin rummy. Kate is a great girl, very smart. We’re a good team because she’s a light sleeper. You could hit me with a baseball bat and I wouldn’t wake up. But she’ll wake up: “Was that a pin dropping?” So I get some protection.
Playboy: Does all the gossip bother you?
Depp: It’s part of the game. You know that the tabloids—from the obvious ones to the subtler ones such as Time and Newsweek—will print anything to sell those fuckers. But you hear it and it can be stressful. Suppose you and I are at a bar, and you say hello to a girl. That’s innocent. For me the same thing becomes: They were dangling from the St. James Hotel with hairbrushes sticking out of their asses. That can cause a strain.
Playboy: You mean that it wasn’t the St. James?
Depp: Sorry, never happened. Here’s another one: Kate and I had a huge fight at a hotel in New York, a real screaming match in the lobby. It was in the papers. I thought it was pretty magical of us, for we were in France at the time.
Playboy: What happened on September 13, 1994, when you smashed up a room at New York’s Mark Hotel?
Depp: Another instance of not being allowed to be normal. I was having a bad day. I think we all have those, but if somebody else does what I did it’s not usually in the news. A security guy came to my door, and I said, basically, “I’m sorry, I broke some things. I’ll repay you.” But that’s not good enough. I go to jail. And the next day this gets equal billing with the invasion of Haiti, me beating up a hotel room. Imagine if I had hit somebody.
Playboy: That clearly bothered you.
Depp: [With an Ed Wood grin] It’s all in a day’s work!
Playboy: Don’t you invite it, though, by dating famous people? How come celebs fall in love only with other celebs?
Depp: Probably because you have mutual friends. You move in the same circles. It’s like working in a factory—you strike up friendships with other employees. Also, you’ll go to a restaurant or a bar that caters to other people who know what it’s like to be exposed. So maybe they’re not after you so much.
Playboy: With the Viper Room you’ve bought your own hideout.
Depp: It’s easier here. I’ll have a couple beers or a glass of wine, get up and play my guitar with some friends. Every Thursday is martini night, a good time. One of the best nights for me was when Johnny Cash played here.
Playboy: He must have matched the black decor.
Depp: Yeah, he was brilliant and he blended in. He was just a head floating up there—beautiful.
Playboy: The tabs have linked you with other celebrities, including Madonna.
Depp: I read that I was in bed with her, which is a ton of shit. I have met her and it went like this: “How do you do?” “Hello, how are you?” Now when anyone asks about my affair with M
adonna I say no, wrong—it was the Pope. He swept me off my feet.
Playboy: For the record, how did you get under the robes of John Paul II?
Depp: Well, he’s shy. I didn’t want to push too hard, but we shared a bottle of wine and I can tell you, the man is a great kisser. Watch him when he gets off a plane. He’ll really give that runway a good one.
Playboy: You’re known for dodging attention by using fake names when you check into hotels. But your pseudonyms make good copy. Mr. Donkey Penis?
Depp: It’s just that if you register as Mr. Poopy, for instance, you get a funny wake-up call. I used to use the name Mr. Stench; it was funny to be in a posh hotel and hear a very proper concierge call out, “Mr. Stench, please!” I never really stayed under the name Donkey Penis. That was an example I mentioned to a reporter once. But I have been Roid, Emma Roid.
Playboy: You’ve said journalistic “fictions” bother you. What has been the worst?
Depp: When something heavy happens and nine out of ten magazines turn it into a fucking vulture fest. They turn you into something sick.
Playboy: You’re talking about River Phoenix.
Depp: When River passed away, it happened to be at my club. Now that’s very tragic, very sad, but they made it a fiasco of lies to sell fucking magazines. They said he was doing drugs in my club, that I allow people to do drugs in my club. What a ridiculous fucking thought! “Hey, I’m going to spend a lot of money on this nightclub so everyone can come here and do drugs. I think that’s a good idea, don’t you? We’ll never get found out. It’s not like this place is high profile or anything, right?” That lie was ridiculous and disrespectful to River. But aside from River, and his family trying to deal with their loss, what about people who work in the club? They have moms and dads in, like, Oklahoma, reading about the place where their daughter tends bar and thinking, Jesus, she’s out in Hollywood swimming around with these awful creatures!
Playboy: Meaning you.
Depp: It was awful for my nieces and nephews to read that stuff, to have every two-bit pseudojournalist speculating viciously…viciously. And it hurt.
Playboy: How did you cope?
Depp: I closed the club for a few nights. To get out of the way so River’s fans could bring messages, bring flowers. And I got angry. I made a statement to the press: “Fuck you. I will not be disrespectful to River’s memory. I will not participate in your fucking circus.”
Playboy: Is it haunting to walk past the spot where River died?
Depp: At first it was. I couldn’t go to the club without thinking of it. Later I came to terms with the fact that it had nothing to do with the club. He was here a very short time. It had nothing to do with anything, really, except that what he ingested was bad, and now there is nothing we can do.
Playboy: Did you shed tears that night?
Depp: That’s a weird question.
Playboy: You don’t have to answer.
Depp: Yes. I shed tears when I heard someone had died. It wasn’t until later, four or five in the morning, that they told me it was River. It’s so sad to see a young life end. And now I’m starting to feel like I’m on The Barbara Walters Special. Are you going to make me cry?
Playboy: No, we’ll even change the subject. Let’s talk about your boyhood. What’s your earliest memory?
Depp: Catching lightning bugs. Beautiful, fascinating bugs. There was a little girl who lived next door who had a brace on her leg. We used to play on the swing set, and the night the astronauts landed on the moon, her father came out and looked up and said, in all seriousness, “When man sets foot on the face of the moon, the moon will turn to blood.” I was shocked. I remember thinking, Geez, I’m six and that’s a little deep for me. I stayed up watching the moon. It was a big relief when it didn’t change.
Playboy: Didn’t you have an uncle who was a Bible-thumping preacher?
Depp: Yes. That gave me an odd sense of religion. He was theatrical in the pulpit. He would start crying, praising the Lord. Pretty soon the adults were screaming hallelujah, getting on their hands and knees, crawling up to kiss his shoes, and I just didn’t buy it. I’m not saying my uncle was full of shit, because he was a good guy. I just didn’t like the duality—seeing him behave normally at home and a whole different way in the pulpit. It was too convenient. Why did the Lord strike you only in church? Why didn’t he hit you in the bathroom or when you were barbecuing hot dogs?
Playboy: As a boy, did you think you were headed for big things? Did you ever want to be a movie star?
Depp: At four or five I fancied myself a Matt Helm, the spy Dean Martin played. I also wanted to be Flint—James Coburn. Those guys got all the women.
Playboy: Were you geeky as a kid?
Depp: I’m geeky now. I sure don’t look around and say, “Hey, isn’t this great?” I’ve never felt that and probably never will.
Playboy: Did you like your name? It’s a great movie name, but a kid might rather be Johnny Jones.
Depp: It spawned nicknames. I was Johnny Dip. Deppity Dog. Dippity-Do. I didn’t mind it, and didn’t really think about it until my first movie, when they asked how I wanted to be billed. John Depp? It sounds pumped up. I was always Johnny.
Playboy: You were a kid when the family moved from Kentucky to Miramar, Florida.
Depp: We moved like gypsies. From the time I was five until my teens we lived in 30 or 40 different houses. That probably has a lot to do with my transient life now. But it’s how I was raised so I thought there was nothing abnormal about it. Wherever the family is, that’s home. We lived in apartments, on a farm, in a motel. Then we rented a house, and one night we moved from there to the house next door. I remember carrying my clothes across the yard and thinking, This is weird, but it’s an easy move.
Playboy: Were you a bully? Ever beat up anyone?
Depp: The guys I hung out with in my early teens were bullies, kind of, so I did a little of that. Picking on someone, pushing people around. I didn’t like it. It got me so angry that I’d be on the poor guy’s side.
Playboy: Meanwhile, you hated school—
Depp: I wasn’t learning. I felt the teachers were there to kill eight hours and get paid. I had more fun playing guitar. I was playing in a band in nightclubs at an early age, and that was an education.
Playboy: How old were you when you lost your virginity?
Depp: I was about 13, playing guitar at a club, and this girl who was a little older had been hanging around listening to us. She was a virgin, too. That night we just…partook. It was in the bass player’s van, a blue Ford. I knew what to do—I had studied the subject for many years. And I remember us laughing, having a good time together. It’s a sweet, sweet memory. She became my girl for a while, but then we lost touch. I haven’t seen her in a long time, about 19 years.
Playboy: You were 15 when your parents split up. Were you crushed?
Depp: There wasn’t time. It was too traumatic for my mom.
Playboy: Betty Sue—her name is on the heart tattoo on your left arm.
Depp: She got very ill. Her life as she had known it for 20 years was over. Her partner, her husband, her best friend, her lover, had just left her. I felt crushed that he had left, but when you’re faced with something like that, it’s amazing how much abuse the human mind and heart can take. You just get past what you need to get past. Sure, on some level I was thinking, Wait a minute, what happened to my family? What about stability, the safety of the home? But my feelings were secondary to thinking about my mom. All the focus was on her getting through that time, which she finally did, and now everyone is pretty OK. I’m even on good terms with my dad.
Playboy: At the time, though, you were subject to various fears.
Depp: Oh, yes. My sister Christi had a baby when I was 17, and I had just heard about crib death. The horrible thing was that
it wasn’t understood. For some unknown reason the baby would stop breathing. So I would sneak into where the baby was sleeping and put my hand in her crib, hold her little finger, and I’d sleep on the floor like that. It was stupid, I’m sure. But I thought the warmth of my hand might help, that maybe if she felt my pulse it would remind her to breathe.
Playboy: You were sensitive.
Depp: A total paranoid.
Playboy: You dropped out of high school about that time. Did the other Depps try to talk you out of it?
Depp: No, they were supportive. It was other people, family friends, who thought I was a shithead. They figured I was proving them right by dropping out of school to play guitar in nightclubs. And I thought maybe they were right. My main feeling when I left school was one of insecurity. It was, What the fuck am I gonna do? I’m nobody. I’m a fuckup, just like those outside voices say. I seriously considered joining the Marines because I didn’t want to be a fuckup. I thought that if I joined the Marines and learned to deal with authority, maybe I could be a normal guy.
Playboy: Then why aren’t you crewcut Colonel Depp today?
Depp: My band had some success.
Playboy: You were 17. Your band, the Kids, rubbed shoulders with major acts when they toured Florida. There’s a famous tale about you and Iggy Pop.
Depp: We opened for the Ramones, the Pretenders, the Talking Heads. One night we opened for Iggy. It went great. After the show I was pretty drunk, and in the Iggy tradition I wanted more, so I started screaming at him. Just sophomoric insults: “Iggy Poop! Who the fuck are you? Iggy Slop!” He got in my face and said, “You little turd.” And walked away. So of course I was delighted. I looked over at the bass player and said, “Yeah, that was Iggy. He’s a god.”