By Johnny
. . . In his own words
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Before They Were Famous
In Their Own Words
by Johnny Depp
December 1987
Text and Photographs by Karen Hardy Bystedt
Published 1996
Excerpt
from the Introduction by Karen Hardy Bystedt:
These
interviews serve to remind us that despite the fact that these actors
and actresses have been immortalized on celluloid and are constantly
written and talked about, they are people just like you and me with
their own unique personalities, strengths and insecurities. I read a
quote recently from Johnny Depp. He said, "Why should I be
considered any different from Joe the garbage man or the guy selling
doughnuts down the street? Why can't I be as human and emotional as
anybody?"
Johnny
Depp
In
1987, Johnny Depp was already a teen idol through his starring
role on the television series 21
Jump Street. He was living in a modest
one-bedroom
apartment in an art-deco building on Whitley Avenue in Hollywood. I
would run into him several times late at night when he'd be hanging
out with Nicolas Cage and other friends at Canter's, a popular
after-club eatery.
I recently photographed Johnny
again. His hair had grown but his angelic face remained much the
same. Stardom had not inherently changed him; he was still
soft-spoken and sweet. I did notice, though, a newfound inner
strength and self-assurance.
Johnny wanted to go
beyond doing traditional leading-man roles and he has.
I
grew up in many different houses. One in Miramar,
Florida, sticks out in particular. We lived at 68th Avenue and Court,
on the corner of a busy street. The house was a three-bedroom built
in the sixties. It constantly smelled of my mom's cooking: soup,
beans and ham. I remember my brother and sister fighting. I had a
poodle named Pepi. I shared a bedroom with my brother, who is 10
years older than me. He listened to a lot of Van Morrison and Bob
Dylan.
We
moved constantly. My mom
just liked to move for
some reason. By the time I was 15, we had lived in about 20 houses.
It was hard. Depending on how far we'd move, you'd have to make new
friends. Fortunately, I didn't have to change schools often. But we
never stayed in one neighborhood for long. At the drop of a hat, we'd
go.
My mom was a waitress; she'd been a waitress since she
was 14. My father was the Director of Public Works in Miramar. They
divorced when I was about 16.
To this day, I hate it when I
have to move from location to location. I get very angry, as a result
of having to move so much as a kid. I live in Hollywood now, but I'm
in Vancouver shooting 21 Jump Street about
nine
months of the year.
I was very mischievous as a boy. I loved
tape recording people when they didn't know. One time a friend and I
dug a really deep tunnel in my backyard. We covered it with boards
and leaves. I was attempting to dig a tunnel into my room. I liked to
push it and see how far I could go. If you knew me during high
school, I think you'd describe me as "the kid with long hair who
was always playing guitar." I wasn't big on participating in
school activities. I used to bring my guitar to school and I'd skip
most classes to sneak into guitar class.
The teacher would
give me a practice room to play in. That's pretty much what I spent
my high school years doing.
You
know, I never made the decision to become an actor.
At least not in the beginning. I got into it off-the-cuff. I moved
from Florida to Los Angeles with a band I was playing with called The
Kids. A friend of mine introduced me to Nicolas Cage and we started
hanging out. Nick thought that I should try acting and see what would
happen. At the time, I wasn't making much money. I played a few clubs
with the band here and there, but I still had a lot of time. So, I
decided to give it a shot. Nick set up a meeting for me with his
agent and she sent me to read for a movie. They gave me a script to
study. Two days later, I read for it and they gave me the role. That
was Nightmare on Elm Street.
Doing Nightmare on Elm
Street was a trial-by-fire sort of thing. I'd never acted
before.
I'd never done school plays; nothing. The fact that it was totally
new to me was a tremendous challenge. I'd never done anything like
this, hitting marks and saying lines and thinking about why my
character was doing what he was doing. It was totally the opposite of
being in a rock 'n' roll band. In a band, you are four people, all
working together to write great songs or to get a record deal. In
acting, I found it was just me. It all depended on me and my own
choices. I didn't have to answer to anyone about what I wanted to do.
The band wasn't doing well, so I turned my energies toward acting.
As
you become more well
known as an actor, more people get
involved in you, directly and indirectly. You've got the "Suits"
or "Bigwigs," as I call them, the "yeses" and the
"nos." Sometimes, they want you to do things that maybe you
don't believe in or feel like doing, like promos. I tend to follow my
instincts and say, "No, I'm not going to do that." It
causes trouble, here and there. But I think the main thing is to be
honest, rely on your instincts and do what you feel is right and not
necessarily rely on what other people think.
Television is a
little frustrating for me. There's no time for preparation. In
features, you have loads of time to do the work. And the work is the
most important thing of all. I think that in the beginning of an
acting career, everybody wants to achieve notoriety or stardom. In
the beginning, that was very glamorous to me.
You want to be
famous because you want to be good at what you do and you want to be
recognized for it, right? Now, being famous isn't as important to me.
My goal is to keep learning because I'm nowhere near where I want to
be. Like I said about the fame thing: if that becomes the motivation
behind everything, even if you achieve it, you're going to get stuck
there and you're not going to go any further.
I don't believe
in the whole "leading-man thing and that's all he's ever going
to do." I mean I'd like to shave my eyebrow or my hair off, or
do anything. I want to hopefully, with some of the roles that I do
later on, make people see things in a different light, so that they
won't just go with the flow and feel they have to be or act a certain
way, just because the President says, "That's the way it is."
I'd like to do as many different roles as I can.
I
try to read as much as I can. On The Road by Jack
Kerouac
is one of my favorite books. There are a lot of books I've read that
I'd like to film. I love the concept of The Metamorphosis
by
Franz Kafka. I'd like to become a giant cockroach. I love Van Gogh.
I've always been interested in people who had mental torment,
weirdos. I think everybody is pretty whacked out in their own way. I
deal with my anxiety by smoking a lot of cigarettes and listening to
very loud music. I like Bach, the Georgia Satellites, Led Zeppelin
and Tom Waits. I like Tom Waits a lot.
When I was a kid, I
did drugs when I freaked out. I mean, I was in a rock 'n' roll band
in Florida, the cocaine capital of the world. Drugs are really
prominent in the club scene, especially there. They were hurting me
physically and mentally. Drugs were dragging me down. They were
killing me. I quit. Now, I just smoke like a fiend.
I would
never do a role that glamorized self-abuse or racism. Racism freaks
me out. The black and white thing. The term "nigger" is
still used constantly. Why is somebody who's black a "nigger"?
It doesn't register. Living in Florida, there's tons of rednecks out
there. I mean, these guys want to hear "Sweet Home Alabama"
24 hours a day. Racism freaks me out a lot.
The homeless are
pretty important to me. There are a lot of people out there who have
no food, no home and no money. A lot of them are there by choice but
some can't help it. I wish some of the people with the big bucks,
instead of buying a Rolls-Royce or another Mercedes, would give a
little scratch to the people who are hurting. I don't know about
sacrifices. I think once you make a choice to be an actor, there's
always a balance between good and bad. You've got to go through hell
to get to heaven. In every good there is evil; in every evil there is
good. Through everything bad that's happened to me, I've learned from
it, which is OK.
People
usually think that if
you're an actor
and you're 24 and you look a certain way that you're an asshole. So
they treat you like an asshole at first. Then they realize that
you're a human being and a nice guy.
As far as actors go, I
like Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson and Walter Matthau. I respect Nick
(Cage) a lot. He's trying to go for something really different and
he's in a great position to do that. He's very intense and he's got
really innovative ideas. I think he's going to do a lot.
Why
would a director choose me? I can only say that hopefully, there's
something underneath my look or image that maybe hasn't come out yet,
that he thinks he could bring out. I want to try to do things
differently. I want to experiment. I want to express different things
at some point. It's just the beginning. I'm not even born yet. I'm
still trying. I'm still pushing. I hope I never stop pushing. I don't
ever want to get to a place where I feel satisfied. I think if I do
that, it will all be over.
Johnny Depp, December 1987