PEOPLE, May 14, 2001 – Johnny depp
Title: Johnny depp
Publication: PEOPLE
Issue: May 14, 2001
ACTOR Onetime teen idol Johnny Depp has gone out of his way to lose the dreamboat label. He keeps his hair long and lank, wears ratty clothes and has made his body what he calls a “journal of skin” by acquiring multiple tattoos—including one that says “Wino Forever,” amended after his 1993 breakup with fiancee Winona Ryder. “I jot down life experiences that mean something to me— jot them down permanently.” Depp. 37. told The New York Times last month. The tattoos “just add to his whole gypsy mystique.” says Ted Demme, director of Depp’s latest film, Blow. “He looks like he’s on the outside, like he’s doing what he wants.”
Demme’s right on both counts. The Kentucky-born actor has been snubbing Hollywood since his 1998 move to France, where he shares a Paris apartment and a farmhouse near Saint-Tropez with actress-singer Vanessa Paradis, 28, and their daughter Lily-Rose, who turns 2 this month. Depp doesn’t work the red carpet on award nights, nor does he routinely hype his films on the talk show circuit. Yet the parts—and the plaudits—keep coming.
In the past year Depp has played two bohernian roles, in the historical drama The Man Who Cried and in the Oscar-nominated fable Chocolat. That film’s director, Lasse Hallstrom, says the part of Roux, the Irish wanderer who woos Juliette Binoche’s Vianne, was “a perfect fit”