Johnny Depp.org

Now you see Johnny Depp, now you don’t

Johnny Depp believes in ghosts. He has come to this haunted place looking for one in particular, a little girl wearing a silk party dress with a powder blue sash. She is often heard playing in the room across the hall from where Depp is sleeping in the Mackay Mansion, a three-story Victorian built high in the mountains of Nevada.

The small spirit likes the room. A cranberry glass chandelier casts spirals of ruby light upon shelf after shelf, each filled with antique French and German porcelain dolls. Side by side they sit, forty pairs of eyes staring toward the door, waiting for her.

Depp waits as well. “I want to run into some spirits here!” he says eagerly. When he isn’t gazing across the hall, he’s shooting Jim Jarmusch’s film Dead Man, a western set in the late 1800s, in which he finds his mug on a wanted poster. “When I was a kid I used to have these dreams,” says Depp. “But they weren’t dreams. I was awake, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. And a face would come to me. Someone told me it was the spirit of someone who died that was very close and never got to say something that they wanted to say. And I believe it.”

DEPP’S FACE POSSESSES a beauty usually reserved for apostles and saints and silent-movie stars. Draped over perfect bone structure, his impossibly pale skin is without a line or a crease-this despite 31 years, too many cigarettes, other interesting substances, and frequent extreme acts of human expression. It is a countenance one would not hide, but in his latest film, Don Juan DeMarco, Depp is a masked man.

“It chose me, it came to me,” he says, speaking not of a ghost but of the script by writer and first-time director Jeremy Leven. Depp in turn chose Marlon Brando to play the psychiatrist who tries to convince a Don Juan wannabe that he’s not the world’s greatest lover, just a guy having delusions of greatest lover grandeur.

His first meeting with the mythic Marlon took place at Brando’s house, over Chinese takeout. “He’s maybe the greatest actor of the last two centuries,” says Depp. “But his mind is much more important than the acting thing. The way that he looks at things, doesn’t judge things, the way that he accesses things. He’s as important as, uh, who’s important today? Jesus, not many people … Stephen Hawking!”

The admiration is mutual. Faye Dunaway, who played Depp’s lover in Arizona Dream (which was never released in the United States) and plays Brando’s wife in Don Juan, says. “Brando adores him. He loves Johnny’s genuineness and modesty and that he is who he is. You’re not a great actor like Brando for nothing,

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Title: Ghost in the Machine

Author: Holly Millea

Publication: Premier

Issue: February 1995

Johnny Depp believes in ghosts. He has come to this haunted place looking for one in particular, a little girl wearing a silk party dress with a powder blue sash. She is often heard playing in the room across the hall from where Depp is sleeping in the Mackay Mansion, a three-story Victorian built high in the mountains of Nevada. The small spirit likes the room. A cranberry glass chandelier casts spirals of ruby light upon shelf after shelf, each filled with an­tique French and German porcelain dolls. Side by side they sit, forty pairs of eyes staring toward the door, waiting for her.

Depp waits as well. “I want to run into some spirits here!” he says eagerly. When he isn’t gazing across the hall, he’s shooting Jim Jarmusch’s film Dead Man, a western set in the late 1800s, in which he finds his mug on a wanted poster. “When I was a kid I used to have these dreams,” says Depp. “But they weren’t dreams. I was awake, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. And a face would come to me. Someone told me it was the spirit of someone who died that was very close and never got to say something that they wanted to say. And I believe it.”

Depp’s face possesses a beauty usually re­served for apostles and saints and silent-movie stars. Draped over perfect bone structure, his impossibly pale skin is without a line or a crease—this despite 31 years, too many ciga­rettes, other interesting substances, and fre­quent extreme acts of human expression. It is a countenance one would not hide, but in his latest film, Don Juan DeMarco, Depp is a masked man.

“It chose me, it came to me,” he says, speaking not of a ghost but of the script by writer and first-time director Jeremy Leven. Depp in turn chose Marlon Brando to play the psychiatrist who tries to convince a Don Juan wannabe that he’s not the world’s greatest lover, just a guy having delusions of greatest-lover grandeur.

His first meeting with the mythic Marlon took place at Brando’s house, over Chinese takeout. “He’s maybe the greatest actor of the last two centuries,” says Depp. “But his mind is much more important than the acting thing. The way that he looks at things, doesn’t judge things, the way that he assesses things. He’s as important as, uh, who’s important today? Je­sus, not many people . . . Stephen Hawking!”

The admiration is mutual. Faye Dunaway, who played Depp’s lover in Arizona Dream (which was never released in the United States) and plays Brando’s wife in Don Juan, says, “Brando adores him. He loves Johnny’s genuineness and modesty and that he is who he is. You’re not a great actor like Brando for nothing,

read more