The defiant one: Johnny Depp has had studio executives squirming over his interpretations of how characters should be played. But “you’ve got to do what you believe in,” the actor says. It is dangerous for a rebel to be loved too much. Defiance is the troublemaker’s oxygen, and the surprise of a great big bear hug from the mainstream powers-that-be can be enough to choke it right out. There’s a temptation to wriggle free. Johnny Depp, one of his generation’s most iconoclastic actors, is in that situation now with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, the sequel to the […]

He wasn’t looking for superstardom, so superstardom came looking for him. Johnny Depp on family, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and how he got a chest of gold without selling his soul. Fatherhood has a way of changing people, even iconoclasts. “When I became a dad for the first time, it was like a veil being lifted,” Johnny Depp says, as he leans forward, rolling loose tobacco into dark brown paper and using his knee as a table. “I’ve always loved the process of acting, but I didn’t find the occupational hazards particularly rewarding.” Occupational hazards like being stalked by […]

Captain Jack was so piratically liberated, he made [people] question their entire lives. How had they become so cautious, so boring, so utterly middle-of-the-road? What the hell had happened to them? Oddly Enough, Johnny Depp had the exact same experience himself, which he described five years ago in a lovely little article he wrote called “Kerouac, Ginsberg, the Beats and Other Bastards Who Ruined My Life.” The story begins with the day his older brother ripped Frampton Comes Alive! off the turntable, put on Astral Weeks, and handed him a copy of On the Road: “And so began my ascension […]

I had the honor of meeting and getting to know Allen Ginsberg for a short time. The initial meeting was at a soundstage in New York City, where we were both doing a bit in the film The United States of Poetry. I was reading a piece from Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues, the “211th Chorus,” and as I was rehearsing it for camera, I could see a familiar face out of the corner of my eye: “F** me,” I thought, “that’s Ginsberg!” We were introduced, and he then immediately launched into a blistering rendition of said chorus, so as to […]

For all his offbeat roles Johnny Depp has the elegance of the silent-screen star and a decidedly European cut. Kevin Sessums finds the nomadic founder of Hollywood-style grunge making his directorial debut, The Brave, and settling into a $3 million 1930s mansion. Johnny Depp sits in the middle of the Mojave. His shoulder-length hair has been dyed a shade or so blacker than the Hills that pass for mountains over in South Dakota. Movie makeup darkens his skin. Those hood­ed, haunted eyes of his concen­trate on the screen of a tiny monitor. Physically spent after many weeks of directing The […]

Johnny Depp slips me $20 when we shake hands. “Do that again.” “It’s preparation, it’s all preparation,” he explains, and we shake hands again, more of a brush of fingers, really, the sort of discreet, low-key maneuver. A $20 bill appears in my palm. Depp looks around the room with a wry, satisfied smile, as though he’s just pulled off a magic trick. “I’m a compulsive big tipper,” he says. “But it’s embarrassing if you just hand the money over. You give it to them in a handshake. If they put it in their pocket right away, they feel confident […]

What a week. You know, you’re staying at this hotel, the Mark. It’s not your regular place, but come on–you’re paying twenty-two hundred dollars a night for the presidential suite, you think at least they wouldn’t look at you funny every time you cross the lobby. Is that too much to ask? Every time … especially this one guy who works there. You can just tell he doesn’t like you, he doesn’t like you at all. And why? Because you didn’t change your jeans or wash your hair? So it’s five in the morning and a couple of million cups […]

It’s the second time around for our roving reporter and Hollywood’s best-looking bad boy. I mean, I’ve interviewed this guy before and one of the things I know about him is that he loves a good goof. After all, isn’t his “Are-they-or-are-they-not-a-couple?” status with Ryder one of those need-to-know Depp essentials? These days, the former 21 Jump Street rave has a thing or two to feel cool about. By the time he’s finished up a new flick in Texas, a total of three Depp movies will be theater-ready, his first since Cry-Baby and Edward Scissorhands. First up is the oddball […]

Can Johnny Depp, TV’s tattooed teen idol make the leap to the big time with movies like Cry-Baby and Edward Scissorhands—or is this just his 15 minutes of fame? Wayne Newton blew away Johnny Depp in Vegas the other night. Newly named Male Star of Tomorrow, 27-year-old Depp was sharing the dais with fellow honorees Anjelica Huston, Female Star of the Year, Jeff Bridges, Male Star of the Year, Producer of the Year Joel Silver, and Batman Tim Burton, Director of the Year, for whom Depp will next appear in the Fox movie Edward Scissorhands opposite Female Star of Tomorrow […]