Alright, my name is Corrin; and I have a confession to make. Up until this Christmas break (2003), I didn’t know who Johnny Depp was. I have now been converted. I mean, I guess I knew who he was, but I never really cared.until one fateful winter day in Paris. My parents split up when I was six and my dad went Paris to open his own gallery/art supply shop. Every summer and alternate Christmas I go and visit him. We generally get along really well, but this year his new girlfriend Vanessa (absolutely no relation whatsoever to Vanessa Paradis.maybe there are just a lot of them in Paris.) caused a few heated discussions. It’s not that I don’t like her or anything, I just like being able to spend time with my dad. Anyhow, so we got in a huge fight and I stormed out of the shop, bought a ticket and hopped on the first Metro that came along. See, the thing about me is that I’m sometimes not all that bright. Needles to say, I wound up in Chaillot. My French is fairly good, but wandering around strange parts of a foreign city in the middle of the night is never a good idea. I was alone, thoroughly miserable, lost, and cold to boot. Here’s a very useful piece of advice, if ever you plan on running away in winter.bring a coat. By now I was beginning to realize the stupidity of my predicament. I started to jog, more out of cold than real anxiety. I was in a fairly nice district at least.there had to be another Metro around someplace. I turned up Rue de Point, basically sprinting. As I ran, something caught my eye or rather, two something’s. A pair of men were sitting on the front steps of a marble building. The older one looked about 60, with a heavy wool coat and salt-and-pepper hair. His companion was.Johnny Depp. I stared. Correction: My head turned and stared, the rest of me kept on running square into a lamppost. The force of the impact knocked me flat on my back, and the “SMACK” of my skull hitting the metal was deafening. My entire left side went numb, and my peripheral vision blacked out. Of all the people on the planet who could have seen me bean myself on a pole, it had to be a celebrity. I peeled myself gingerly to a sitting position. I was in the worst pain of my life. Now, this could have been a very embarrassing situation, thankfully my wit and intelligence saved the day.
“F@#*k! You’re Johnny Depp!”
I astutely observed. He stared at me with a mix of shock, amusement and genuine concern.
“Are you alright?”
I nodded, getting to my feet. The world was spinning. I thought I was going to puke, ‘But hell,’ thought a slightly amused part of my brain, ‘I’ll get to say I puked on Johnny Depp.how cool would that be?’
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Title: Playboy Interview: Johnny Depp
Publication: Playboy
Issue: May 2004
Johnny Depp has one of the quirkiest resumes in Hollywood. After starting his career as a TV heartthrob, he reinvented himself as a serious actor in offbeat and usually brutally uncommercial movies: He was critically acclaimed box office poison. But now, thanks to his role in last year’s $300 million-grossing smash Pirates of the Caribbean—a big, goofy Disney family film that is the antithesis of Depp’s indie work—he has at last emerged as a mainstream star. He notched his first Oscar nomination. People magazine dubbed him the sexiest man alive for 2003, even as he turned 40. And the actor with a penchant for getting in trouble—and landing in jail—has been replaced by a kinder, mellower Depp, a family man who has given up drinking and drugging in favor of days in the park with his kids. Who the hell is this guy anyway?
Depp’s early days are well documented. As an undercover cop on 21 Jump Street, he emerged as an instant teen idol in 1987. But a future as a lunch box icon scared him, and he quickly fled to movies. He turned down star-making parts that later went to Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves and Brad Pitt, but he found a niche playing idiosyncratic misfits. He became a muse for director Tim Burton, who first cast him in the title role of Edward Scissorhands and later in Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow. He played a tormented introvert in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, a drug-addled Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and a conflicted undercover FBI agent in Donnie Brasco. There’s barely a normal guy in his repertoire.
Born in Owensboro, Kentucky, Depp was an indifferent student. At the age of 16 he dropped out of high school, began pumping gas and joined a band that opened for Iggy Pop and the Ramones. In 1983 the band moved to Los Angeles but struggled to find gigs. For a while Depp sold ballpoint pens by phone. His then wife, Lori Allison, introduced Depp to Nicolas Cage, who arranged a meeting with an agent. The rest is history.
Flash-forward a couple of decades, and Depp is the hottest actor in town. His latest film is Secret Window, and future projects include J.M. Barrie’s Neverland, in which he plays the author of Peter Pan; The Rum Diary, based on a Hunter S. Thompson novel; and The Libertine, in which he will play a debauched 17th century poet. More is on the horizon, including a Burton-helmed version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the inevitable gazillion-dollar sequel to Pirates.
Depp’s run-ins with paparazzi are tabloid fodder, as are his bad-boy exploits involving drink, drugs and a long list of beautiful women, including Sherilyn Fenn, Jennifer Grey and Winona Ryder. He and Ryder were serious enough that he emblazoned himself with a winona forever tattoo.
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