Mmore About Johnny Depp

Family Name: Relation: Notes:
Lori Anne Allison wife Married in 1983; divorced c. 1985; former girlfriend of Nicolas Cage
Jack Depp son Born April 9, 2002; mother Vanessa Paradis
Lily-Rose Melody Depp daughter Born May 27, 1999; mother, Vanessa Paradis
Betty Sue Palmer mother Depp has a tattoo with his mother's name on his left arm; divorced Depp's father when he was 15 (c. 1978)
John Christopher Depp father Divorced Depp's mother when he was 15 (c. 1978)
Daniel Depp brother Older
Debbie Depp sister Older
Christie Dembrowski sister Born c. 1961; handles Depp's affairs from her Florida home
Companions Name: Relation: Notes:
Kate Moss companion Born Jan. 16, 1974; together from 1994-1998; announced engagement in 1995; separated in 1997; reunited briefly; split in May 1998
Winona Ryder companion Together from 1990 to 1993; engaged briefly; had a tattoo of 'Winona Forever' on his arm, which he has altered to say the more appropriate 'Wino Forever'
Jennifer Grey companion Dated from 1988-1989; were briefly engaged, before they split
Sherilyn Fenn companion Dated from 1987-1988
Vanessa Paradis companion French; born c. 1972; together from June 1998; mother of Depp's two children
Milestones Replaced the deceased Heath Ledger's character in, "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" (lensed 2008)
Sold ball-point pens by phone before he began acting
Started own rock group at age 13; subsequently played in 15 other bands
Will portray notorious Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger in Michael Mann's 1930s gangland flick "Public Enemies" (lensed 2008)
1969 Moved to Miramar, Florida
1983 Moved to Los Angeles with band, The Kids; played lead guitar
1984 Introduced by his then-wife Lori Allison to actor Nicolas Cage, who helped arranged a meeting with an agent who set up audition for his feature acting debut in Wes Craven's "A Nightmare on Elm Street"; the director's daughter Jessica also played a part in convincing her father to cast Depp
1985 First screen lead, "Private Resort"
1985 TV acting debut in episode of "Lady Blue" (ABC)
1986 Had small role in Oliver Stone's "Platoon"
1986 TV-movie debut, "Slow Burn" (Showtime)
1987 Began working with the Make-A-Wish Foundation
1987 - 1990 Starred as a baby-faced undercover cop in TV series, "21 Jump Street" (Fox)
1990 First hit movie, Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands" co-starring then-girlfriend Winona Ryder
1990 Headlined John Waters' "Cry-Baby" playing the Elvis-inspired, leather-clad title role; first film acting with Iggy Pop
1992 Appeared along with Jerry Lewis and Faye Dunaway in Emir Kusturica's "Arizona Dream"
1993 Impressively recreated silent-comedy routines of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in "Benny and Joon"
1993 Opened L.A. club, The Viper Room
1993 Starred in the title role of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape"
1994 Directed the eight-minute short film "Banter" for DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education)
1994 Played infamous, cross-dressing, B-movie director "Ed Wood"; second film with Burton
1995 Acted opposite Marlon Brando in "Don Juan DeMarco"
1995 Formed the rock group P, making major label debut on Capitol Records
1995 Made first action film, John Badham's "Nick of Time"; cast as a mild-mannered accountant who becomes embroiled in an assassination scheme
1995 Purchased first home in Los Angeles; house once owned by Bela Lugosi
1996 Starred as William Blake in Jim Jarmusch's post-modern Western "Dead Man"; film also featured Iggy Pop
1997 Earned some of the best reviews of his career as the title character in "Donnie Brasco"; based on the book about an FBI agent who infiltrated the Mob
1997 Feature directorial debut, "The Brave" reteamed him with Brando; also wrote and co-starred; premiered at the Cannes Film Festival; Iggy Pop wrote the score
1998 Portrayed Raoul Duke in Terry Gilliam's adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"; first film with Christina Ricci
1999 Received star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (November 16)
1999 Reteamed with Burton for "Sleepy Hollow" starring opposite Christina Ricci
1999 Starred as corruptible rare-book dealer hired to find satanic texts in Roman Polanski's supernatural thriller "The Ninth Gate"
1999 Starred opposite Charlize Theron in the thriller "The Astronaut's Wife"
2000 Had two roles in Julian Schnabel's "Before Night Falls," a biopic of gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas; portrayed an imprisoned drag queen with a gift for smuggling and a brutally officious army officer
2000 Reteamed with Terry Gilliam to play a modern-day ad executive whisked back in time in "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote"; shooting began in 2000 but was put on hold when leading actor Jean Rochefort suffered a double disc hernia
2001 Cast as a British policeman with unorthodox means of tracking a serial killer in the thriller "From Hell"
2001 Portrayed American George Jung, one of the major cocaine traffickers for Columbian kingpin Pablo Escobar, in Ted Demme's "Blow"
2003 Played a sociopathic CIA agent in the Robert Rodriguez western feature "Once Upon A Time In Mexico"
2003 Starred in the blockbuster hit "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"; earned Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Actor
2004 Played a writer who is accused of plagiarism by a strange man, who then starts haunting him in "The Secret Window"
2004 Portrayed 'Peter Pan' author J.M. Barrie in "Finding Neverland" also starring Kate Winslet; received Golden Globe, SAG and Academy Award nominations for Best Actor
2005 Cast as Willy Wonka, in Tim Burton's remake of the classic tale "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"; earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor
2006 Reprised the role of Captain Jack Sparrow in Gore Verbinski's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"; received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical
2007 Reprised role of Captain Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"
2007 Reteamed with Burton to play The Demon Barber of Fleet Street for the film adaptation of the musical, "Sweeny Todd"; earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a leading role
Notes

" ...not a lot of people can say that they have been able to sit down at a table with Iggy Pop and Patricia Hearst and Polly Bergen and John Waters all at the same time." - Depp in Us, February 1994

"His childhood informs who he is, but his choice of roles is where he wants to live as artist." - co-star Faye Dunaway quoted in Premiere, February 1995

"I CANNOT take this job seriously. There's nothing worse than those actors who give the impression they've taken on the priesthood. At the end of the day, acting is really about lying and, in my case, drinking coffee." - Johnny Depp as quoted by Liz Smith in her syndicated column, Feb. 17, 1999

"I did feel like an outsider. I felt completely and utterly confused by everything that was going on around me. It was the one thing that the teachers didn't want you to do in school, you know, question things. But I always wanted to know why. It was 'Well, you should do this and you shouldn't do that...' 'Oh okay, why not?' It really pissed them off, but it shouldn't piss them off because it's a fucking valid question. It's the only question." - Depp on feeling like an outsider growing up, to Empire, August, 2005

"I had done a few films, like 'Platoon' with Oliver Stone, then came '21 Jump Street'. Suddenly, I was not an actor. I was a personality, a product. That was definitely not what I wanted. I told myself, 'When this TV thing is done, I will only do the things I find interesting and see how long I can do it.'"

"People say I make strange choices, but they're not strange for me. My sickness is that I'm fascinated by human behavior, by what's underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people." - Depp to USA Today, Nov. 29, 1999

"I know this sounds so fucking stupid, but I can't help it, I just want to be normal. I mean, I got a strange job, yeah, [but] I'm a father, I've got a girl, I got a family, and I want to be normal, that's all, and I don't want to be looked at like some kind of freak. If you want to turn me into some kind of freak or animal in the zoo, the anger starts to rise in me. Immediately. I just don't like it."

"Fame isn't something you figure out until you've swallowed a bit of it, till you've had that ramrodded down your gullet. Celebrity is a strange word. I can't think of myself in those terms. There's no way I walk 30 feet down the boulevard and someone doesn't say, Johnny Depp. There is never that day. I don't have that day." - Depp quoted in Detour, December 1999-January 2000

"I've always considered myself very lucky to still be getting jobs after all the weirdness I've put people through in terms of having to watch my films." - Johnny Depp to People, Sep. 13, 2005

"If you ever catch me saying 'I'm a serious actor', I beg you to come and smack me. I'm not a serious actor. Just an actor." - Johnny Depp quoted in London's Evening Standard, Dec. 30, 1999

"In some sense there is a monofilament running through the guys I've played. They are outsiders. They're people that society says aren't normal, and I think you have to stand up for people like that." - Johnny Depp quoted in the London Times, Feb. 7, 2002

"It's my job, you know. I go and I act in movies. When they say, 'Hey your done' on a movie, at that point my job is done and the rest is none of my business. So it always feels uncomfortable to go out and talk about your self." - Depp in Premiere magazine, May 2004

"One of the most incredible moments I've ever had was sitting in Vincent [Price]'s trailer and I was showing him this first-edition book I have of the complete works of Poe with really amazing illustrations. Vincent was going nuts over the drawings and he started talking about 'The Tomb of Ligeia', then he closed the book and began to recite it to me in this beautiful voice, filling the room with huge sounds. Such passion! I looked in the book later and it was verbatim. Word perfect. It was a great moment. I'll never forget that." - Depp quoted in Movieline, October 1994

"Part of the process that I've always enjoyed is being the observer. You know, just watching people and learning. At a certain point, the reversal took place. I was no longer the observer - I was being observed. That's obviously very dangerous because part of an actor's job is to observe." - Depp to Esquire, January 2008

"There's an element of Johnny that's extremely nice and extremely cool, but at the same time, he's hard to figure out. But that's what makes him interesting." - Leonardo DiCaprio on working with Depp in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" quoted in Premiere, February 1995

People Magazine named Johnny Depp the "Sexiest Man Alive" for 2003

About allegedly attacking a group of paparazzi with a piece of wood: "They wanted a photograph of me and my pregnant girlfriend. And that angered me, that they would take something so sacred and try to turn it into a product." He asked them, like a gentleman, to go away. "And they said no, 'We'll be here waiting for you.'"

Depp snapped. He grabbed the wood, rapped one photographer in the knuckles, and told them, "'Now take the picture. I'm fucking begging you. Because the first flash I see, the guy is gonna be the recipient of this.' Six guys. Nobody took one picture. The beauty, the poetry of the fear in their eyes, in these filthy maggots' faces, was so worth it. I didn't mind going to jail for, what, five or six hours? It was absolutely worth it." - from Premiere, December 1999

Depp has recorded with the band Oasis and has a songwriting credit with Iggy Popp, whom he first met at the age of 17 when his band (The Kids) opened for Pop in Florida. At that time, Depp's obnoxious behavior earned a "You little turd" rebuke from the musician, but the two later became friends.

Depp on fatherhood: "I used to go through the world, thinking I was seeing things clearly, but I was kind of stumbling and viewing events through a haze, like a gauze or something. Then the instant my baby was born, I looked at her and immediately, instantly, everything came into a sharp focus. I looked at her, this pure little angel, that I was just meeting for the first time, and I realized I had known her for 10,000 years. There willl never be anyone that will know me better, that will understand me just by a look. I know I will never be closer to another human being. She hasn't changed my life, she's given me my life, in the sense that everything now has a reason. I used to think I was happy, that there were things in my life that would make me smile, but the biggest difference is that now I can feel my smile, it's all connected." - Depp quoted in San Francisco's The Examiner, Nov. 22, 1999

Depp reportedly turned down the roles of Lestat in "Interview With the Vampire", Jack (the Keanu Reeves role) in "Speed" and Brad Pitt's role in "Legends of the Fall". He told Kevin Sessums in Vanity Fair February 1997: "I'm not 'Blockbuster Boy'. I never wanted to be. I mean, it would be nice to get a shitpile of money so you can throw it at your family and friends. I just don't know if movies can ever be considered art, because there's so much money involved."

Depp was arrested in NYC in 1994 for allegedly trashing a hotel room (he agreed to pay for all repairs) and again in London in February 1999 for allegedly threatening photographers with a plank of wood.

Depp was named one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People for 2004

E! Entertainment Television named Johnny Depp as their pick for entertainer of the year for 2003.

Johnny Depp did not originate the role of Officer Tom Hanson in "21 Jump Street". In the series' pilot, the role was played by Jeff Yagher.