A Window Into His Soul

More than once when he was a boy, Johnny Depp was visited in bed by ghostly faces floating in front of his own. Because his eyes were open, he was pretty sure he was awake-but it was possible he was dreaming. Someone once explained to Depp that the faces represented the spirit of a dead soul trying to contact him. But he’s not sure if he buys that. All he knows for certain is that the images were very real-and while they lasted, wildly entertaining.

Today the faces floating around Depp are those of the characters he’s played in his consistently offbeat film career. Each represents a part of his soul, he believes. Each opens a window. These films, which Depp thinks have defined him to studio heads as “the guy who does weird movies,” not only unmask Depp to his audience, but have helped the actor decode himself. He refers to the experience as “meeting up with old friends that exist inside you.”

In his first breakout film role, as the title character in “Edward Scissorhands” (1990), Depp explored his lifelong sense of loneliness. “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” (1993) forced the actor to confront painful family memories. In “Ed Wood” (1994) and in one of two small parts in last year’s “Before Night Falls,” Depp did the transvestite thing, enabling him to flaunt his feminine side.

Now with his latest film, “Blow,” which opens Friday, Depp perhaps comes closest to facing down demons that nearly destroyed his life. As real-life cocaine trafficker turned addict George Jung, Depp portrays a man not unlike himself who has amassed great wealth and popularity-toasting and toking up at an endless carousel of parties-but still feels hollow. “I’ve felt that forever and ever,” he says.

This March afternoon, Depp has arrived almost 90 minutes late to the interview, for which he apologizes repeatedly, and through his charm, manages to get away with it. That charm has no doubt come to serve Depp well throughout his troubled past. The 37-year-old is in fact so charming that you begin feeling a little guilty for having allowed his tardiness to validate his reputation as an irresponsible Peter Pan.

He is seated, rolling tobacco in licorice-flavored paper, in front of a beat-up coffee table in Room 69 in the Chateau Marmont-his former home and usual interview venue. He likes the Marmont because it is one of the few reminders of old Hollywood that still exists on the Strip. Though the photographer and publicist have left us alone, his sister Christi (who has worked as his assistant since 1992) remains. Though she keeps out of sight, one has a feeling Depp’s protective older sibling is listening to every word.

He does not ask permission to smoke and makes no apologies for sending clouds of toxins directly into his interviewer’s face. Nothing stops Depp from lighting up; he continued smoking throughout his actress girlfriend Vanessa Paradis’ pregnancy (though he took it into another room and he and Paradis now go outside for their smokes).

As much as his careless actions may solidify his reputation as an aloof party boy who has little regard for others’ time or (if you recall that infamous 1994 hotel room thrashing) property, that would be too easy an assumption.

His closest friends, even shock rocker Marilyn Manson, agree Depp owns the trademark on quirkiness-a trait detected by actor pal Marshall Bell during their introduction in 1984 at a Lebanese barbecue dive on Pico. “We were sitting at the table,” recalls 56-year-old Bell, whose biggest role was the mutant-stomached George Kuato in “Total Recall,” ’and then for no reason he dumped a beer over his head.”

Childhood pal Sal Jenco, whom Depp has entrusted to manage his Sunset Strip club, the Viper Room, for the past seven years, talks of Depp’s fondness for whoopie cushions, his deep-seated fear of clowns and his complete lack of vanity.

‘He likes people who aren’t beautiful,” Bell explains.

While he manages to clean up nicely for his film roles, at the moment there are scant traces of the all-American pinup boy Fox turned him into back in 1987 when it launched the TV series “21 Jump Street.” Depp describes that “disturbing” time as “the start of the weirdness,” when Hollywood attempted to transform him into a “mass-produced thing.” He has struggled hard to escape the Hollywood star factory ever since.

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Today, he has most certainly escaped the image of sex symbol, perhaps too well. Pale, heavily tattooed and strangely bearded, he is dressed in a peculiar ensemble that’s part Bob Marley, part Road Warrior and part Dr. Seuss (the floppy, striped “Cat in the Hat’-style chapeau).

“Maybe I’m a little sloppy in my dress,” he admits. Manson remembers that when he and Depp went Christmas shopping at Toys R Us the year before last, the duo went unrecognized by the cashier. “And I was buying a ‘Sleepy Hollow’ action figure,” says Manson, laughing.

“He wears a pair of boots he had for 15 years that he got on ‘Jump Street,”’ adds Bell, noting Depp’s non-glam look aids his anonymity. “He befriends certain outfits and stays with them.”

Two skull rings adorn his fingers as “reminders of the dark side.” Around his neck hang the tooth of a tiger and one of the beaded necklaces his gypsy character created in “Chocolat.” It is almost as if this scraggly man has been led down from cell block C for an interview. All that’s missing are the handcuffs, though it’s a good bet he has a pair of those stashed away somewhere, probably in the basement of his vintage Hollywood Hills mansion that once belonged to big-screen bloodsucker Bela Lugosi. The mansion is supposedly haunted (some friends refuse to stay the night), and legend has it that part of “The Wizard of Oz” was filmed within its walls, both rumors giving Depp incentive to purchase the house just before he began work on “Donnie Brasco” in 1995.

“Every day of my existence,” he says proudly, “is like an episode of ‘Scooby-Doo.”’ So far his Geraldo Riverian excavation of the property has unearthed only a vintage Listerine bottle-a relief to know Bela kept his breathe minty fresh.

Just before filming “Blow,” Depp paid two visits to a real prison, the Otisville Federal Correctional Institute in New York state, to meet the real George Jung, locked away until 2014 as part of a 20-year sentence for violating parole (events have been modified slightly in the film). As the “kindred spirits” exchanged stories, Depp studied his subject’s every move.

“When I introduced them, I was amazed by the amount of philosophical things they agree upon,” says the film’s director, Ted Demme, who still talks to Jung by phone three times a week. “They both worship Bob Dylan and love Jack Kerouac. It was fun watching them mold into one.” When Demme screened the film for Jung, the inmate cried during the last half-hour of what Jung called Depp’s dead-on portrayal.

In Jung, Depp “saw a guy who’s brokenhearted but at the same time ironic about it-full of a sense of humor. A guy who had clearly done wrong in his life, knew it, and wanted so badly to get beyond it and go forward without having to look back.”

It is a desire Depp relates to. “We all arrive at that point in our lives where you’re faced with a turning point,” he says. “Had things not worked out in my life the way they did, had I not found music at a very young age, there’s a very good possibility I would have gone a similar direction [to Jung’s].”

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As a teenager growing up in south Florida, Depp’s circle of friends was connected to the drug scene. Depp says that if he wanted to, selling drugs would have been a natural progression.

“In the world we’re in,” he explains, “when the opportunity presents itself, as it did to George, to make a whole bunch of money tax-free, beautiful women, lots of everything, freedom .... It’s very tempting.” He admits he “dabbled” heavily with a variety of drugs, but says Jung’s drug of choice-cocaine-never did much for him. “Of course I tried it, I did my share of it, but it was never really my favorite,” he says, declining to say what was.

Since the Halloween 1993 death of actor River Phoenix (whom Depp says he knew only in passing) at the Viper Room, Depp’s name has been notoriously, and perhaps unfairly, tied to the Hollywood drug world. “The club took a lot of heat for something it had nothing to do with,” says Depp, who was tending bar the night of the tragedy. Though he is now able to view his club separately from the incident which continues to draw tourists, he still thinks often of Phoenix, “especially every October.”

Depp remembers that a few years back, he overheard two patrons in a bathroom stall at the club preparing to snort coke. Obsessed with avoiding a repeat tragedy, Depp became so enraged that he grabbed the boys by their shirt collars and had the bouncer toss them out onto the Strip, not far from the spot where Phoenix collapsed and died.

“After what happened to River, that they thought it was OK to do that really put me in a hideous rage,” he says.

Depp says he wasn’t a junkie but admits that he was “very, very lucky” that he never overdosed like Jung. He came closest during the difficult filming of “Gilbert Grape.” The content of that film-’the ups and downs of family, the responsibility, growing up and not growing up,” as Depp describes it-threw him for a loop. “Everything was really intense in my brain. It was the beginning of a strange exorcism.”

He has sworn off alcohol and drugs himself, he says, since realizing his substance abuse was more self-medicating than recreational. To help deal with uncomfortable social situations, like red-carpet premieres, he would often turn to the bottle. “I was trying to escape feeling, hurt, pain . . . numbing myself,” he recalls in a contemplative whisper. “But you’re only postponing the inevitable. At some point you gotta face it.”

Exactly what he was trying to escape remains a mystery. Depp says his home life as a boy was turbulent, marred by feuding parents who finally went their separate ways when he was 15, leading his heartbroken mother to suffer a breakdown. “For a great number of years, my parents’ relationship was very, very rocky,” he recalls. “That little kid who needs a strong foundation, a sense of security, safety ....There were a number of years where I don’t remember having that. I felt loved ... but I also felt hated. All extremes. [My parents] were going from what they learned, so it continued.”

He assumed his parents’ fighting was normal. “I thought that everybody’s family was like that,” says Depp. Not until he was invited for dinner to the home of childhood friend Jenco did he realize his family life was out of the ordinary. “It was like walking on Mars for the first time-all these great things. I found the fact that they ate salad before they had dinner was strange. Everybody sat down to dinner at a certain time. It was a completely different world. It was calm.”

Depp says he has only a few memories of his own family, including his mother and father, brother Danny, and sisters Christi and Debbie, all seated around the dinner table. “Holidays were the one time you were guaranteed a certain amount of comfort or happiness,” says Depp, the youngest of the family. “You knew one day a year you’d get that.”

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With a “Wino Forever” tattoo inked on his arm as a reminder of past indulgences and a fiancee (‘Wino” used to read “Winona’), Depp says he is more centered than ever. What he credits for his dramatic reversal is the arrival of his now 2-year-old daughter, Lily Rose. “I felt hollow for so many years, until my girl and I got together and she got pregnant ... and our daughter was born,” says Depp, who’d like to have “a couple dozen” more.

“This has been a wake-up call of monumental proportions, something so pure, so honest,” he declares. “Everything else that I’ve ever done or been through just shriveled up.”

Manson says his friend “has matured, but he still has all the spark of being a kid. Lily has helped him be even more of a kid because now he has a playmate.”

Depp claims his inspiration for cleaning up his life has less to do with setting an example than with a heightened desire to stay healthy so that he might live to see his daughter grow up. Asked how Lily’s upbringing will differ from his own, Depp says, “I’m not going to expose her to the unnecessary pain, ignorance, selfishness and violence that occurs in family life. And I’m certainly not going to raise her in the United States, because it’s the most violent place on Earth . . . a greedy, gluttonous place. It’s not like I hate America; I do very much hate what it’s becoming.”

For the past 2 1/2 years, Depp has made Paradis’ native France his primary residence. Lily’s first language is French, but she is also learning English and Spanish. “The quality of life that I’ve found over there is a completely different animal,” says Depp. “France is more my home now.” Even so, Manson says that when he visited Depp in France, the only place the actor would eat was McDonald’s.

Depp seldom reads a newspaper and never the trades. And should his eye catch a glimpse of a tabloid, the definition of which he widens to include People and US magazines, he will immediately turn the periodical face-down in the rack. “I don’t want to know what they think about me

Except for his “Chocolat” co-stars Juliette Binoche and Judi Dench, Depp had no clue who the nominees were for last Sunday’s Oscars. Depp himself has never been nominated for an Oscar-and says he doesn’t care if he ever is. He has never even filled out an Oscar ballot.

“His [film] choices are really to do with his heart and intuition, not a career perspective to win an Oscar,” notes Binoche.

Notorious for his aversion to watching himself perform, Depp managed to sit through a showing of “Blow” on a TV monitor, and was generally pleased with his portrayal. “It’s sort of big responsibility to be playing a living person, a guy who’s around still,” says Depp. “After the first 10, 15 minutes, once we sped through the ‘60s and got into the ‘70s, it felt like George.”

The film spans four decades, showing Depp aging from 21 to 58, a journey the actor found fascinating. Of his own maturation, the actor says, “The older I get, the more I see of both my father and my mother. The first time I saw ‘Chocolat’ was at the premiere in New York. And there was this one moment when my sister and I looked at each other and went, ‘Dad.’ It was exactly my father.”

While enjoying his newfound tranquillity, Depp confesses that “all of the emotions are still there, from happiness to sadness to rage-it’s all there and probably not too far from the surface. But I’m allowing myself to say, ‘OK, let’s meet the demon. You can’t hurt me any more than you already have.’ I numbed myself and poisoned myself for so many years, only to find out that it’s really selfish and really dumb.”

Notes Bell, “For a professionally unhappy, doom-and-gloom person, it’s hard for him to say he’s happy, but I think now he is.”

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More windows to Depp’s soul will open later this year with the fall release of the Hughes brothers’ “From Hell.” Co-starring with Heather Graham and Ian Holm, Depp plays an investigator on the trail of Jack the Ripper, a 19th century serial killer who has long fascinated Depp. And this summer he’s back with “Sleepy Hollow” co-star Christina Ricci in Sally Potter’s indie film “The Man Who Cried,” involving the Nazi occupation of Paris. Depp once again plays a gypsy-a persecuted subculture with which he identifies.

To Binoche, Depp possesses many gypsy-like qualities. “A gypsy needs his family,” she says, “and I think he found a family in the people he works with like Lasse [Hallstrm] and Tim Burton. I once asked him why he works so much, and he said, “I just have to keep my head busy.”’

He plans to begin work soon for director Griffin Dunne in “Nailed Right In,” playing a mobster before jumping into “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” the story of “Gong Show” and “Dating Game” mastermind Chuck Barris. He also hopes to one day reteam with Burton for a the film adaptation of the cult novel “Geek Love,” a Warner Bros. property the two discussed making years ago. Depp would play Arturo, a murderous flipper-footed circus oddity-another tailor-made role for a man who owns a collection of rare bugs and horrific medieval paintings celebrating the Inquisition, letters from Charles Manson, naughty videos of celebrities and a torture chair placed in the entryway to his home.

Depp’s eccentricities, it turns out, crawl about even in his dreams. Though the ghostly faces may have disappeared, his unconscious journeys remain as quirky as his films. His most recent dream found him with Jenco; the pair were holding the black-and-white skin of an iguana “from the tail to the back of the neck,” he recalls.

“We were selling the skin and I got my friend to taste it. He didn’t seem particularly grossed out, although I had the vague idea that it might be somehow pickled. And then we found ourselves sitting at school desks, where we knew we didn’t belong.”

So was that a dream or a nightmare? Depp just laughs at the question. “I’ve had my share of nightmares. Believe me, that’s a dream.”