by Johnny Depp
Playboy: Is there less harassment in France?
Depp: Not necessarily. They fly helicopters over our property, in front of the kitchen window. They have these long lenses.
Playboy: Here’s another big change: You recently turned 40. Are you surprised that you made it?
Depp: It was questionable for a while.
Playboy: Were you genuinely worried that you wouldn’t?
Depp: In your teens and your 20s, you’re immortal, you’re untouchable. It’s only later that you begin to realize you are mortal.
Playboy: You once said that everyone thinks of you as a drug-addicted, brooding, angry and rebellious mental case. How apt was that description?
Depp: Well, for many years they said I was a wild man. Now they say I’m a former wild man, former bad boy, former rebel. I guess “former” because now I’m a dad. The media tries to stuff you into a mold. It happens to everybody. He’s the new bad boy, the new James Dean, the new whatever. It’s both amusing and annoying. My mom reads that stuff. So do my nieces and nephews and all my family. At times it was flat-out fiction.
Playboy: At one point your life did seem out of control. Was it drugs?
Depp: Mostly alcohol. There were drugs, too—pills—and there was a danger that I would go over the edge. I could have. I thank God I didn’t. It was darkest during the filming of Gilbert Grape.
Playboy: What were your drugs of choice?
Depp: I was never a cokehead or anything like that. I always despised that drug. I thought it was a waste of time, pointless. But I was poisoning myself with alcohol and medicating myself. I was trying to numb things.
Playboy: What things?
Depp: I was trying not to feel things, and that’s ridiculous. It’s one of the dumbest things you can do, because all you’re doing is postponing the inevitable. Someday you’ll have to look all those things in the eye rather than try to numb the pain.
Playboy: How far did it go? Were you ever an addict?
Depp: No, thank God I was never hooked on anything. I never had a monkey on my back. I just wanted to self-medicate, to numb myself through liquor. It’s how I dealt with life, reality, stress, change, sadness, memories. The list goes on. I was really trying to feel nothing.
Playboy: What led you to stop?
Depp: Family and friends sat me down and said, “Listen, we love you. You’re important to us, and you’re fucking up. You’re killing yourself. You’re killing us in the process.”
Playboy: Did you listen to them?
Depp: Not right away. You don’t listen right away because you’re dumb. You’re ignorant. You’re human. Finally it seeps in. Finally the body and mind and heart and psyche just go, “Yeah, you’re doing the wrong thing.”
Playboy: Did your family and friends actually do an intervention?
Depp: At a certain point they intervened. At the time I said I appreciated it. I went through the motions. I said I was okay, and I went for a couple of months being a dumb ass. But I could see things turning into a nasty tailspin. And then I thought, Maybe I’m slow, but this is ridiculous. Fuck it, just stop! So I stopped everything for the better part of a year. I guess I just reached a point where I said, “Jesus Christ, what am I doing? Life is fucking good. What am I doing to myself?” Now I drink a glass or two of red wine and that’s it.
Playboy: River Phoenix died of a drug overdose outside your club. What impact did that have on you?
Depp: It was devastating. I can’t imagine the depth of pain that his family and close friends felt. It was rough for me, but for them it must have been unbearable.
Playboy: How well did you know him?
Depp: We knew and were certainly respectful of each other. There was always the sort of promise, “Hey, we’ll get together and do something sometime.” I liked him. I liked his work ethic, and I liked his choices. He was a sharp guy. He had so many amazing possibilities before him. Fuck, what a waste. For what?
Playboy: Did it affect your drinking and drug use?
Depp: That was 1993, when I was doing Ed Wood. I was completely sober—no hard liquor, no wine, no nothing. Even so, all the tabloids started saying we were having drug parties. The whole thing was weird, awful, ugly and sad. The incident is seared onto my brain, onto my heart.
Playboy: Are that and the other darker times in your life reflected in your work? Tim Burton once said you had an affinity for damaged people. Do you?
Depp: I do have an affinity for damaged people, in life, in roles. I don’t know why. We’re all damaged in our own way. Nobody’s perfect. I think we are all somewhat screwy, every single one of us.
Playboy: Did you feel damaged as a child, or was yours a relatively normal childhood?
Depp: Normal? I wouldn’t go that far.
Playboy: Then how was it abnormal?
Depp: It was strange, though then again, it was normal to us. It wasn’t until I started going to other kids’ houses and hanging out, having dinner, seeing what a family is supposed to do that I saw that we weren’t normal.
Playboy: How was it different?
Depp: Even down to sitting around a dinner table together—it wasn’t an everyday occurrence in my house. At my house dinner easily could have consisted of a bologna sandwich, and then you’d split. You might come back later and grab a few peanuts, and then you’d split again. That was it. I would go to my buddy Sal’s house for dinner. I couldn’t understand what was going on with everyone sitting down together. I’ll never forget seeing romaine lettuce for the first time. I thought it was weird—I was afraid of it. There was salad and appetizers and soup. I had no idea about that. I grew up on hillbilly food.
Playboy: Apparently you were no more at ease in school. Were you a problem student?
Depp: Yeah, in high school.
Playboy: In what way?
Depp: There was this vicious woman, a teacher. If you weren’t in her little handpicked clique, you were ridiculed and picked on. She was brutal and unjust. One day she told me to do something, I can’t remember what. Her tone was nasty. She got very loud in my face in front of the rest of the class and tried to embarrass me. I saw what she was doing, that she was trying to ridicule me. I turned around and walked away. As I did, I dropped my drawers and mooned her.
Playboy: How did she react?
Depp: She went out of her mind. Then of course I was brought before the dean and suspended for a couple of weeks. At that time it was coming anyway. I knew my days were numbered.
Playboy: What in school interested you?
Depp: I was more interested in music than anything else. Music was like life. I had found a reason to live. I was 12 when my mom bought me a $25 electric guitar. I had an uncle who was a preacher, and his family had a gospel singing group. He played guitar in church, and I used to watch him. I became obsessed with the guitar. I locked myself in my bedroom for the better part of a year and taught myself chords. I’d try to learn things off records.
Playboy: Which records?
Depp: I was very lucky to have my brother, who is 10 years older than me and a real smart guy. He turned me on to Van Morrison and Bob Dylan. I remember listening to the soundtracks to A Clockwork Orange and Last Tango in Paris. I loved Aerosmith, Kiss and Alice Cooper, and when I was older, the Clash, the Sex Pistols and the Ramones.
Playboy: Why didn’t your music career pan out?
Depp: At a certain point I realized that, in terms of a job, maybe I didn’t have the passion for it.
Playboy: What effect did your parents’ divorce have on you?
Depp: I was 15, I think. It had been coming for quite a long time. I’m surprised they lasted that long, bless their hearts. I think they tried to keep it together for the kids, and then they couldn’t anymore.
Playboy: How were they as parents?
&n
bsp; Depp: They were good parents. They raised four kids. I was the youngest. They stuck it out for us all those years. But we lived in a small house, and nobody argued in a whisper. We were exposed to their violent outbursts against each other. That stuff sticks.
Playboy: What led you to acting?
Depp: Opportunity. I never really had an interest in it in the beginning. Nicolas Cage—we had some mutual friends—introduced me to his agent. She sent me to a casting director, and I auditioned for the first Nightmare on Elm Street. I got the job. I was stupefied. They paid me all that money for a week. It was luck, an accident. I did it purely to pay the rent. I was literally filling out job applications at the time, any kind of job. Nic Cage said, “You should try being an actor. Maybe you are one and don’t know it.” I began acting, and I thought, Well, this is an interesting road; maybe I should keep traveling on it. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, so I started to read everything I could about acting—Stanislavsky, Uta Hagen, Michael Chekhov. I started soaking it up.
Playboy: Then you landed a starring role on 21 Jump Street. How do you look back on that experience?
Depp: It did great things for me, and I’m thankful for the experience. It was a great education, but it was very frustrating. I felt like I was filling up space between commercials.
Playboy: Yet it was very successful and launched your career.
Depp: Yeah. I’d been evicted from an apartment and had moved into a friend’s place. I was scrambling to pay the rent, waiting for residual checks from other things that I’d done to pay the bills. I went from that to making a bunch of money. I went from anonymity to going to a restaurant and having people point at me. It was a shock. But what really bothered me was that I could see the machine. I could see the wheels turning. I could see where it was all going, and it scared the shit out of me.
Playboy: Where was it going?
Depp: Fox was creating the Fox network, using 21 Jump Street to build it. They were shoving my face out there, selling me as this product. It made me crazy. I thought, After this you’ll be in a sitcom. You’ll be on a lunch box and then a thermos and a notebook. And in two years you’ll be ridiculous. It paid good money and was a good gig, but I wanted something else.
Playboy: What did you do to change your career?
Depp: I waited and waited and waited to do a movie, because I wanted to do the right one. I wanted to go as far away from the series as I could. The first film I did after Jump Street was Cry-Baby with John Waters. That was a great experience. After that I did another season of the series, and then I did Edward Scissorhands. During that movie I got the phone call saying I was out of the show. I felt like, Ah, possibilities. I was freed up. I swore to myself that I would never again compromise to the degree that I had. I swore that I wouldn’t just follow the commercial road. I wouldn’t do what was expected of me or what was necessary to maintain whatever it is—a popular or financially rewarding career. I promised myself that I wouldn’t do that.
Playboy: Has the success of Pirates changed that attitude?
Depp: Years ago I said to myself, I’ll never do television again. No way. Nothing in the world could get me to do it. And then somewhere in the back of my mind I’m thinking that it might be cool someday to do a television series, just to be in one spot for a while. You never know what’s going to happen. One minute you’re doing one thing and people are interested, and the next minute they’re not interested. It’s just an odd game. I mean, I may want to do dinner theater. Maybe it’s not so bad. I’ve always said I might end up being forced to do McDonald’s openings dressed as Edward Scissorhands. You never know.
Playboy: You’ve turned down roles later played by people such as Brad Pitt, including a part in Thelma & Louise. Was that a mistake?
Depp: I don’t regret any of the things I didn’t do, and I certainly don’t regret any of the things I did do, down to the dumbest. Everything happened the way it should happen, even ridiculous things that I did in the beginning. I don’t regret any of it.
Playboy: You’ve starred with some impressive actors, including Al Pacino and Marlon Brando. What did you learn from them?
Depp: I watched them like a hawk. I sponged as much of an education as I could. Ultimately it solidified what I already knew from being a musician: Do what’s right for you. Whether you’re a musician, an actor, a painter or a writer, there’s some degree of compromise in what you do, but don’t compromise unless you think it’s right. Stick to your guns, no matter what. Don’t let them step on your toes, man.
Playboy: And then there was Traci Lords in Cry-Baby. Is the former porn star a method actor?
Depp: I remember meeting her. I could sense she was a little bit protective of herself, wary of people. She was a little closed off in the beginning, but soon she was incredibly sweet and really professional. Kind of adorable. I loved her, man. I love her to this day.
Playboy: These days how do you choose which movies to do?
Depp: I can tell in the first 10, 15 or 20 pages of a script, sometimes in the first three pages. I can tell if it’s something that’s going to be right. I start getting images in my head, then I start writing things down.
Playboy: What are you looking for?
Depp: I just want something different. I want to be surprised. I want something that doesn’t feel formulaic or beaten to death. For Secret Window, I read the script, and I loved it. The ending is great. I didn’t see it coming. It’s based on a Stephen King novella. It’s extremely well written. Even the screen direction is entertaining: “Looks left, looks right, walks to the fridge, grabs a Cheeto and splits.” The story has a great twist.
Playboy: Is it true that you based your Pirates of the Caribbean character, Captain Jack, on Keith Richards?
Depp: And Pepe Le Pew.
Playboy: The cartoon?
Depp: Yeah. When I was a kid Pepe was one of those great Saturday morning cartoons. Pepe is a French skunk who hops along, the most happy-go-lucky guy in the world. As he’s hopping along, people are falling over from the stink, but he never notices. I always thought, What an amazing way to go through life.
Playboy: And why Keith Richards?
Depp: When I decided to do the movie I started thinking about pirates of the 17th and 18th centuries. It came to me that the modern-day equivalent is a rock-and-roll star.
Playboy: How are they like pirates?
Depp: They live dangerously. They’re wild and capable of anything, just like pirates. And once I made that connection, I thought, Who is the ultimate rock-and-roll star? Keith Richards.
Playboy: Do you know Richards?
Depp: I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with him over the years, and yes, I have gotten to know him. And he is kind of a pirate. For the movie, I didn’t want to do an imitation of Keith, but I wanted to take the spirit of Keith, the beautiful, laid-back confidence.
Playboy: Since when do pirates wear all the makeup your character wears?
Depp: Actually, for a while Keith did. Bob Dylan did too in the 1970s. He went through a period when he wore dark kohl eyeliner. I looked into the kohl thing. It comes from the nomad tribes in the desert in Africa. It’s protection for the eyes from the sun. Football players use it for that today. And I took other stuff from Keith, too—things dangling in his hair, the beads.
Playboy: Richards isn’t your only influence. Apparently you based Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow on Angela Lansbury, and Ed Wood on Ronald Reagan. They seem a strange sampling of choices.
Depp: Well, Angela Lansbury is an amazing actress. I thought of Ichabod Crane as a very nervous, ultrasensitive prepubescent girl. That’s where Angela Lansbury came in. I thought of some of the work she’s done over the years, especially in Death on the Nile. I also based Ichabod a bit on Roddy McDowall, who was a very good friend.
Playboy: And President Re
agan?
Depp: Ed Wood was based on Reagan, yes, but also on the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. And Casey Kasem. It was a weird little soup of those three.
Playboy: Why those three?
Depp: I remember watching Reagan make speeches. He had this kind of innocence and a naive, blind optimism—“Everything’s going to be fine.” You’re like, “Well, it’s not! It’s not going to be fine.” Jack Haley’s performance as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz is one of the strangest I’ve ever seen. Watch that film and think about a grown man giving that performance. It’s really astounding.
Playboy: What about Casey Kasem?
Depp: [Doing a Kasem impression] What I always liked about Casey was that he had a delivery that was so upbeat.