JOHNNY-DEPP.org

Title: Johnny Depp Acting in Character for Sleepy Hollow

Author: Jean Cummings

Publication: Shivers

Issue: December 1999

JOHNNY DEPP has always chosen roles that are differ­ent, and his newest film Sleepy Hollow he displays his talent for humour and drama in a film reminiscent of the Hor­ror films of the ’50s and ’60s. Depp has the starring role in this new version of Washington Irving’s fable The Legend of Sleeply Hollow but the success of the film comes from the multi-faceted character of Ichabod Crane.

American-born Depp now lives with his wife Vanessa and their young daughter in France, but he had to adopt an English accent for the role of Crane. It is something he worked hard to develop.

Inspiration

“You know what I did?” he responds to our inquiry. “I watched a lot of old Horror films. People like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.” The inspiration for the character, he says, was in fact three people. “Number one was Basil Rathbone from the old Sherlock Holmes movies. Number two was a very great friend of mine that recently passed away, Roddy McDowell. He was a great man, a great actor and he was a very impor­tant model for the character. In a way this was my opportunity to tip my hat to him, to thank him, to salute him. The third was a terrific actress, Angela Lansbury, she was a great model for the character.

read full article

Title: Johnny Deeper

Author: Bill Zehme

Publication: Sky Magazine

Issue: September 1991

Johnny Depp is his real name. As a boy he was ridiculed for it. In the schoolyard he was called Dipp. Or Deppity Dawg. Later he was cal­led Johnny Deeper, this being based upon a popular adolescent joke he barely remembers: “Something about some guy having sex with some girl who kept saying, Johnny, deeper!’”

The day we meet he extends his hand to shake mine, except that his hand is more like a piece of weaponry. In place of fingers there are blades. We are on a Twentieth Century Fox sound stage where he is making Edward Scissorhands, his second major film, in which he portrays the man-made boy with scissors for fingers. He laughs quietly at his own comic gesture.

Later we meet one morning in a coffee shop, where Winona Ryder, his movie-star fiancée, has left him before driving off to do some errands. He is smoking too much and drink­ing too much coffee. He says he is ensla­ved by caffeine and nicotine and doesn’t sound proud of it. “I like to be pumped up and hack­ing phlegm at the same time,” he says wryly.

“Coupla tequila worms flying out here and there,” Depp says, but he is joking about that. He hasn’t touched the hard stuff for a solid month, maybe longer. Depp is as dry as he’s ever been in all of his 27 years.

read full article

read full article

Title: What’s All This Talk About Johnny Depp?!

Publication: Bop

Issue: April 1989

When you’re John Christopher Depp II, you get used to being the prime subject of conversation.

Fortunately, Johnny (which he prefers to be called) doesn’t take himself too seriously. His attitude is that people are going to talk, so why not let them?

Since most of the chatter concerning this 25-year-old talent is positive, Johnny’s feelings are rarely hurt, nor, surprisingly enough, has he let any flattery go to his head. He simply takes it all in stride.

“Getting attention from the public is very nice, but it’s still a little strange, you know?” he ponders aloud with a clear gaze in his brown eyes that lets you know he is too strong to ever allow fame to affect his ego.

If there is any truth to the study of astrology, then it’s only natural that this Owensboro, Kentucky-native takes an easygoing stance on his celebrity status.

According to the stars, it is a characteristic of those born under the sign of Gemini, as Johnny was, (June 9, 1963 was the magical date) to be the most talked about and controversial folks in the entire zodiac!

Of course, Johnny didn’t exactly choose a career that’s custom-made for those who prefer to keep out of the public eye. As someone who’s dedicated to the field of entertain­ment,

read full article

Title: Does Johnny Depp Alone Make 21 Jump Street A Success?

Publication: Bop

Issue: February 1998

During the 1987-88 season of 21 Jump Street, it could have been very easy to mistake Johnny Depp for the star of the show. It seemed like the gorgeous actor was featured in every single episode!

Things have changed in the “new and improved” 1988-89 season of the series! This year, it’s already apparent that the folks in charge of Jump Street want you to know all four main characters (as well as the new guest star) as real people. Not only are you seeing plenty of Johnny as “Tom Hanson,” but you’re also getting a chance to see more of Peter DeLuise (“Doug Penhall”), Dustin Nguyen (“Harry Ioki”) and Holly Robinson (“Judy Hoffs”), along with the show’s newest addition, Richard Grieco, who plays “Dennis Booker”!

But how do the sparkling personalities of 21 Jump Street fit together behind the scenes? You already know that they’re a distinctly diverse group as far as their hometowns and backgrounds go—so what is the glue that holds them together?

First of all, they get along great’. There’s not a trace of jealous rivalry amongst this bunch! There are, however, lots of good times! Johnny and Peter decided they would place pretty Holly to the fun-test when she initially arrived on the set by ambushing her with water guns! She has since armed herself with her own water pistol and keeps the two banditos at bay with her sharp eye and aim!

read full article

Title: Everything You Wanted to Know

Publication: Teen Machine

Issue: 1998

Dark-eyed Johnny Depp might view himself as one of television’s most reluctant sex symbols, but everytime he appears on the screen, the hearts of viewers can’t help but hop to 21 Jump Street.

When Johnny was growing up in Miramar, Florida, the last destination he envisioned for himself was on a television show At that time, all he wanted to do was play in a rock and roll band. He recalls: “People would remember me as the kid with the long hair who was always playing guitar. I used to bring my guitar to school, skip certain classes and sneak into the guitar class. That’s pretty much how I spent my high school years.”

He finally become a player in a band called the Kids, and they headed out to Hollywood in the hopes of landing a record deal. Once when they were playing a gig at one of the clubs on Sunset Strip, Johnny met and befriended Moonstruck star Nicolas Cage. Johnny’s cash flow of the time was very low, so when Nicholas offered to introduce Johnny to his agent, Johnny complied. He explains: “She sent me out on an audition. The director gave me a script and told me to study it; I did, came bock two days later, read for the part and they gave it to me. That was my first film—Nightmare on Elm Street.”

read full article

read full article

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.

read full article

read full article

Title: Johnny Depp

Author: Leslie Van Buskirk

Publication: US

Issue: February 1994

JOHNNY DEPP APPEARS TO BE IN A TRANCE. HIS EYES ARE GLAZED, registering something halfway between panic and pure bliss; his arms twitch in a kind of slow motion; his famously bowed lips are frozen in a secretive semi-smile.

This is how Depp behaves when he’s really happy. He is standing in his favorite store, the Heritage Book Shop, on Melrose Avenue, in Hollywood, staring at a stack of letters — unpublished correspon­dence between two well-known writers (whose names Depp has requested be kept off the record in case he buys them) — on a desk. Moments before, Depp’s arrival caused a cheery flutter of greetings from the staff, all of whom the actor knows by name. “This is where he gets into trouble,” says owner Lou Weinstein with a wink.

The 30-ycar-old actor has been coming here since he arrived in L.A. from Miramar, Fla., some 10 years ago as a high school dropout who thought playing guitar in a rock and roll band was his destiny. “I didn’t have any money, but they were always nice to me,” he says. Though Depp probably looks the same as he did back then — today he’s wear­ing chinos and a black jacket so frayed it gives new meaning to the word threads — now he can afford the pricey first editions and rare manuscripts that put him over the moon: He’s a movie star.

read full article