Title: hot Chocolate
Author: Adam Stone
Publication: UK Fabric
Issue: July 2005
The Peter Pan of Hollywood tells Adam Stone about his wild past, his family and his new found happiness
Johnny Depp and chocolate – two of the finer things in life and a recipe for sweet success if ever there was one. It’s just this combination that Tim Burton was banking on when he signed up his favourite leading man for his remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
But if you know Johnny Depp as an actor and Tim Burton as a filmmaker, you’ll know this won’t be a sugary tale from the sweet shop counter. This is dark chocolate – very dark – and it’s just how Johnny likes it. The film is based on Roald Dahl`s classic novel about a boy named Charlie Bucket who, thanks to a lucky ticket in a candy bar, becomes one of five children allowed a tour of the amazing chocolate factory run by the eccentric Willy Wonka and his staff of Oompa-Loompas.
Comedy actor Gene Wilder brought Wonka to the big screen in 1971 but his portrayal and the film as a whole infuriated Dahl, who refused the studio sequel rights.
Johnny believes his Wonka would please the legendary writer — if only he had lived to see it. “Regardless of what one thinks of the 1971 film, Gene Wilder’s persona stands out”, says Johnny on playing the magical chocolatier. “He scares the hell out of you. Those are big shoes to fill. So the first thing I did was to go back to the book and try to figure out what Roald Dahl had in his head.” Johnny‘s interpretation of the character is even weirder and darker – as you might expect. Sporting giant glasses and oversized dentures he recites his one—liners such as ‘Chewing gum is really gross – chewing gum I hate the most’ with as much threat as humour. “I play him as a kind of game show host cum bratty child,” says Johnny. “It’s Tim’s version of the book and the character really. We’ve taken the character of Willy Wonka and gone somewhere completely different”.
Johnny previously collaborated with the director on Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow and Ed Wood and jumped at the chance of working with him again. “It was great to be back with Tim — like coming home”, he says of the director now married to Helena Bonham Carter. “We had a great time.” And that sums up life for Johnny Depp right now. No more is he the troubled wild man of Hollywood. At 42, he is more mellow than ever before, content with his life in France with Vanessa Paradis and their two children, Lily-Rose Melody, six, and Jack, three. “I went through a lot of fear and self loathing in my 20s and 30s until it finally got through to me that there wasn’t any point in poisoning myself and feeling miserable anymore.” says Johnny of his difficult past. “I can only tell you that once you escape that kind of mindset, you have absolutely no desire to go back there. It’s not that I wake up mornings screaming, ‘Oh God, things are so beautiful’, but just being with my girl and our kids makes me feel pretty good.
Johnny met French singer and actress Vanessa while making The Ninth Gate in 1999. ‘We share this incredible life together and our children’ he smiles. You can’t plan that kind of deep love or the feeling parenthood brings. lt was part of the wonderful ride. It was kismet, destiny. Now I have become a perfect example of all the paternity clichés I laughed at for years. I look forward to having more children. I’d have 100 if Vanessa were willing. For me, family is the most important thing in the world. It’s your foundation, your roots. It’s the only unconditional love you’ll ever get. ‘When I met Vanessa, I was still drifting. But being with her has just blown me away and made me a better man. Ten years ago l never would have believed in the kind of life I have now as a father, although I still wonder if its OK to be this happy.’ Johnny’s darker times can be traced back to his youth in Florida. At school he was teased and taunted over his eccentric appearance and behaviour and he dropped out to follow his dream of being in a rock band. ‘School was a torment’ he remembers. ‘We moved often — I lived in more than 20 houses in my first 15 years — and I never felt accepted’. When he was 15, his parents divorced, and Johnny was raised by his mother. ‘All her life, she was a waitress in little diners’, he says. ‘But I won’t let her wait tables any more.’ At age 17, Johnny became a rock musician. ‘When I was a kid’ he recalls, `I started playing guitar in the Baptist church where my uncle preached. Then I played in a garage band called The Kids. We opened for Iggy Pop. Playing the guitar helped me to discover who and what l was. It’s one of the true loves of my life.’
He married at 20 and divorced at 23, by which time he had found his way into acting. Broken engagements to Jennifer Grey, Wiona Ryder and Kate Moss followed as Johnny’s private life threatened to spiral out of control. On screen he was heralded as a genius, off screen he was an alcoholic and a depressive. ‘It’s too easy to blame other people and things in your past for your own self-loathing’, says Johnny. ‘When I was drinking heavily, I was just in a really bad frame of mind and using alcohol to deaden whatever I was feeling at the time. l didn’t really know how to handle the process of going from being a nobody to someone who is suddenly famous and getting paid more money than he knows what to do with and having people stare at you in a cafe. I don’t even really know why I was doing it except that l wasn’t happy and so you drink to escape that feeling’. It was his friends and family that eventually put Johnny back on his feet. ‘The thing is, you never think you’re on the verge of disaster while you’re looking over the edge yourself’ he continues. ‘It was other people who were trying to get me to stop and after a while it kind of` sank in and I just cleaned up my act. But that didn’t really solve the problem which was that I was unhappy with the way my life was going and didn’t see any great relief on the horizon. That all changed when I met Vanessa. l pretty much fell in love with her the moment I set eyes on her. As a person I was pretty much a lost cause at that point of my life. She turned all that around for me with her incredible tenderness and understanding. Very quickly, I realised I couldn’t live without her. She made me feel like a real human being instead of someone Hollywood had manufactured. It sounds incredibly corny and phoney, but that’s exactly what happened to me and what she has meant to me.’
After six years and two children together, Johnny has still to pop the big question. But that’s nothing to do with a lack of commitment. ‘The truth is that Vanessa and I have considered ourselves husband and wife since the day we moved in together’ says Johnny. ‘It’s not a big issue for us because we know what we feel for each other, and that kind of connection is what’s going to keep us together for a very long time. Marriage would just be a formality.’
Johnny is still regarded as one of the world’s sexiest men. It’s not a tag he is particularly proud of or one he’s worried about losing. ‘I love growing old, getting some lines in my face, watching my kids grow up’ he says. ‘l think you have to accept getting older because there isn’t anything you can really do about it anyway. And if it bothers you, it’s just a question of surgery, isn’t it?’ he laughs. The truth is that Mr Depp still looks a man fresh out of his 20s, let alone his 30s. He’s more likely to use film to make him look uglier or older. He currently has gold teeth and long, unkempt hair for a second swashbuckling adventure as Jack Sparrow in back-to-back Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. “He’s someone I’ve looked forward to re-visiting”, Johnny says. ‘He’s a charming, interesting fellow, aside from those braids and gold teeth. What’s fun about the character is his outrageousness. I really connected with him and I’ve missed the guy’.
Johnny now finds himself more in demand as an actor and celebrity than ever before. ‘I still have those guys with the cameras staking me out and watching the house – even when were in France’, says Johnny. ‘The difference now is I’m trying not to let myself get worked up about it any more. That just makes them even more money and they know that, so some of them try to provoke you that way. I’ve stopped playing into their hands by giving value to a photo of me. I’m just trying to be a boring family guy because that’s what I am now!’
