When you're confined to a TV series, and you have to play one character, it can make you insane. But it didn't affect me. I got out in time.
— Johnny Depp
When I met people they said, 'You do look like a hobo, but you smell really good.'
I think, as an actor, it is good to feel the fear of failing miserably. I think you should take that risk. Fear is a necessary ingredient in everything I do. But if I do 'Hamlet,' it will probably be in a small theater on a small stage, and it will have to be very, very soon because I'm getting a little long in the tooth for it.
America is dumb. It's like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you - aggressive. My daughter is four; my boy is one. I'd like them to see America as a toy - a broken toy. Investigate it a little, check it out, get this feeling, and then get out.
When I was 12, I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, and I found a chord book in a shop, and I stuffed it down my trousers. And that's how I learned to play the guitar.
I did do a film that I refer to as 'The Unpronounceable' by a guy named Yvan Attal with Charlotte Gainsbourg. I had a bit part in there. That was quite fun, doing scenes in French.
The thing is, even if you're playing sort of a heightened character and playing inside sort of a heightened reality, you can still apply your own truths to those characters.
I do realise and understand very well on a profound level how lucky I am and what a privileged position it is and what it's done ultimately for me, my family and my kids. But at the same time, there are moments in a man's life when you just kind of want to feel somewhat normal.
Prior to 'Pirates of the Caribbean' - the first one in 2003 - I had been essentially known within the confines of Hollywood as box office poison, you know what I'm saying? You know, I basically had built a career on 20 years of failures.
I want to be Ruler of the Exumas. I like the sound of it. I want to become Kurtz and live like in 'Lord of the Flies.'
I'm doing a film called 'Black Mass' where I play James Bulger. The reason to play him is obvious to me. He's a fascinating character. It's not like anything I've done before on that level. I'm very excited to slide into that skin for a little bit.
If someone is being bullied or feels like an outsider, and they relate to something that I've done, even if it's just igniting a spark, that's great. I had that feeling as a kid. I was messed with no end.
I have this fear of clowns, so I think that if I surround myself with them, it will ward off all evil.
I still approach a scene as one would approach a solo. There's nothing set or pat.
I marketed pens - on the phone. But the beauty of the gig was that you had to call these strangers and say, 'Hi, how ya doing?' You made up a name, like, 'Hey, it's Edward Quartermaine from California. You're eligible to receive this grandfather clock or a trip to Tahiti.' You promise them all these things if they buy a gross of pens.
What attracted me to Jimmy Bulger were the various facets of his personality and his humanity because I felt that the only way I could approach playing a character like him was to find his human side first and then map that out to see where it took the turn. He was a very complicated man.
When you're doing a movie, your body doesn't allow you to get sick until you finish.
I have a place that I get to go to in the Bahamas. It's the only place that guarantees total anonymity and freedom.
Here's the thing - if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, in a kind of historical way, it's exciting because we will see the actual last president of the United States. It just won't work after that.
Nobody's ever made a film in the history of cinema where they weren't expecting some return on their dough.
There's always that moment on every movie where you just go, 'Okay, this is that moment. I'm about to potentially fall flat on my face, and I might as well just dive in and see what happens.'
I'm just an actor, and if I can leave something behind that my kids will be proud of, then that's what I want. I don't want my kids to be embarrassed by anything I've done.
I started out printing silk screen t-shirts. I sold ink pens. I worked construction. I worked at a gas station. I pumped gas. I was a mechanic for a little bit. I went into sewers, down into sewer lines. I had a lot of somewhat unpleasant gigs for a time there.
With Ed Wood, it was this sort of blending of Ronald Reagan, the Tin Man from 'The Wizard of Oz,' and Casey Kasem.
I'll take photographs with kids. People who want to take photographs with me. People who like the movies. People who supported me. I'll do that all day, all night, that's fine. But the bombardment of the paparazzi is just... I truly don't understand. It just feels like this kind of gluttonous, horrific sport. It's like sport.
What I love to do is paint people's faces, y'know, their eyes. Because you want to find that emotion, see what's going on behind their eyes.
I'm always for the Indian in the cowboy movie. Always.
Things go wrong for me all the time with technology. I'm not familiar enough with it, and I'm too old-school a brain to be able to figure it out. I'm dumb. Anything that I have to attack with my thumbs, for any period of time, makes me feel stupid. So, I try to avoid it, as much as possible, to protect my thumbs.
At my very core, I'm pretty shy. I just happen to have a weird job.
My favorite color is black.
I moved from Kentucky to Miramar, Florida, at about 8. I think I was in second grade. I still had my Southern accent, and down there, you got to experience a melting pot in full fury. All the kids I hung out with were, like, Sicilian kids from Jersey and New York.
Simplicity - that's what I want. It's been a rare commodity for me for a number of years, but I enjoy being able to hang out with my girl, read the newspaper, and sit back and start to read a book by someone I admire, like Lawrence Krauss or Christopher Hitchens. And that's it - simplicity, where the game of Hollywood doesn't exist.
I always wanted to be a character actor rather than the poster boy that they tried to make me 100 years ago. An actor has a degree of responsibility to change for the audience, to give them something new each time, to surprise and not bore them.
'Edward Scissorhands' was tough to let go of because I found real safety in allowing myself to be that open, that honest. To explore purity. It was a hard one to walk away from.
I don't go anywhere without a book by James Joyce called 'Finnegan's Wake.'
When you disrespect Australian law, they will tell your firmly. Declare everything when you enter Australia.
I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of curiosity and fascination with things like little children. I think we can keep that, and I think it's important to keep that part of staying young. But I also think it's great fun growing old.
After I had done the first 'Pirates' movie and 'Secret Window,' I went on vacation to escape with my kiddies and my girl, and someone said that there was an island down the road for sale. I said, 'Oh well, let's go see it.' I looked at it, I walked on it, and I was done. It had to be.
I've never felt particularly ambitious or driven, that's for sure, although I like to create stuff, whether it's a little doodle, a drawing, a small painting or a movie or a piece of music, so I suppose I'm driven by that. Everything I've done has felt very natural, and it's happened because it's happened.
I went through various stages in my childhood, as we all do, various stages of obsessions with people and things. And I did. I wanted to be the first white Harlem Globetrotter.
It's funny, because what happens to me when I read a script, when something grabs hold of me, I start getting these flashes of people or places or things or images.
I don't think it's anything you ever get used to... for many years, I could never sort of put my name in the same sort of category as the word 'famous' or anything like that. And I just found it very uncomfortable... if you get used to it, then something must be wrong.
When I can focus on something like guitar or painting, I do. I started painting people I admire, like Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Nelson Algren, Marlon Brando, Patti Smith, my girl, my kids.
For me, it's always more difficult and slightly exposing to play something that's close to yourself. I always like to try to hide, just because I can't stand the way I look.
I detest jokes - when somebody tells me one, I feel my IQ dropping; the brain cells start to disappear. But something is funny when the person delivering the line doesn't know it's funny or doesn't treat it as a joke. Maybe it comes from a place of truth, or it's a sort of rage against society.
The commercial flight thing, it just gets a little weird when you're standing in line and suddenly you're not just a guy standing in line anymore - you become sort of 'novelty boy.'
At 13, I was wearing plain t-shirts. Then I used to steal my mom's clothing. She had all these crushed-velvet shirts with French-cut sleeves. And, like, seersucker bell-bottoms.
There's definitely healing properties to being in proximity to the ocean and that breeze. There's something about that Caribbean climate and humidity.
Music is still part of my life, but I hate the idea of people coming to see me play the guitar because they've seen me in movies. You want people who are listening to be only interested in the music.
It's such a funny thing when you see your daughter transitioning from your baby, your little girl, to suddenly being a young woman. If you're not really looking for it, you can miss it, and Lily-Rose is on that road already, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
