REBEL WITH A CAUSE: Johnny Depp

Onetime Hollywood bad boy Johnny Depp finds his life gradually settling down, even as his career soars to new heights.

It is one of the most difficult roles Johnny Depp has ever tackled. In the blink of an eye, the 42-year-old actor has to morph into several female characters under the watchful eye of a very demanding co-star. Her name is Lily-Rose, and she’s six years old.

“My daughter loves playing Barbies with me,” Depp says with a huge grin. “We start assuming different characters with different dolls. I’ve been playing the women. I’ve done it before in film, so why not?”

Like most dads, Depp positively bursts with pride when he talks about his kids. Listen to him swoon over Lily-Rose and her three-year-old brother, Jack—Depp’s children with long-term girlfriend Vanessa Paradis—and it’s hard to believe this is the same man who once bought a Los Angeles club and called it the Viper Room in a nod to ’20s doper slang; or the same volatile actor who trashed a hotel room and went after paparazzi wielding a piece of wood. After years of being a rebel, Johnny Depp has clearly found a cause to calm him down: family life.

“I never thought I would achieve this,” he says, lighting a roll-up cigarette after politely asking permission first. “I never thought I would get there in terms of happiness and contentment. Just being happy with your kids and your girl and your life—it’s wonderful, man. I thank God that I’ve been given this much. It’s pretty miraculous.”

Depp has indeed been a lucky star. Born John Christopher Depp II in Owensboro, Kentucky, on June 9, 1963, he was raised in Florida and dropped out of school at the age of 15 with dreams of becoming a rock star. By the early ’80s, he was lead guitarist for The Kids, a garage band that once opened for Iggy Pop. The course of his life changed, however, when then-wife Lori Anne Allison introduced Depp to Nicolas Cage, who suggested he put down the guitar and give acting a go. With his natural good looks, he immediately made a splash as one of Freddy Krueger’s victims in A Nightmare on Elm Street before landing a starring role in the Fox TV series “21 Jump Street” in 1987. Conventional film fame was well within his grasp, but the actor chose to shun the traditional in favor of the quirky, seeking out oddball directors John Waters and Tim Burton to star in off-beat fare like Cry-Baby and Edward Scissorhands. By picking his roles carefully—he famously turned down parts in Titanic, Interview With the Vampire and Speed—Depp has managed to be more an actor and less a celebrity, something that suits him through and through.

“I don’t look at what I do as anything other than maybe a sli ghtly stranger job than others,” he shrugs. “But to me it is a job; it’s what I do for a living. So to have someone become obsessed or get a litt le manic about things is pretty odd. I have in the past had bizarre episodes with people. Species of stalker, you know, which is pretty uncomfortable.”

If he needed a reminder of how fame can corrupt, it arrived on October 31, 1993, when friend River Phoenix collapsed and died from a drug overdose outside Depp’s Sunset Boulevard nightclub. The tragic incident seemed to herald a period of turmoil for the actor, with reports of him wrecking a New York apartment in 1994 and being arrested for ffighting with paparazzi in front of a London restaurant in 1999.

Depp with long-term girlfriend Vanessa Paradis

“I thought of quitting the business,” says Depp, looking back at the days when the media spotlight was at its brightest. “I think everybody goes through it at some point. We all as human animals experience the inner voice, whether you call it instinct or whatever. I’ve been in situations where I’ve thought this is all too much, this is not what I want and I need to find a way out.”

Salvation arrived in the shapely form of Vanessa Paradis, the singer/actress he fell for while shooting The Ninth Gate in her homeland, France, in 1998.

“Oddly, we don’t argue much about anything,” explains Depp, who at one time had a reputation as a serial engager, counting Jennifer Grey, Sherilyn Fenn and Winona Ryder among his fiancées. “We basically have a miraculous understanding of one another, and we don’t ever talk about the business. So, our life in that sense is very, very simple. We are great, great friends and we’re in love. It’s amazing. Before I had my kids and got together with Vanessa, I couldn’t quite figure what it was all about. Everybody kept talking about success, and they kept talking about money and a career, and none of that stuff made any sense to me. I didn’t care.”

While Paradis offered him the foundations for a stable life, it was the births of daughter Lily-Rose in 1999 and son Jack in 2002 that truly filled a void in Depp’s life. He describes Lily-Rose’s birth as the moment that “gave me life.”

“Children occupy everything,” he smiles. “They demand attention, but in a good way. It’s beautiful. They want to be with their mommy and daddy. You are occupied completely—especially because there are two of them. Actually, I look forward to having a third child and a fourth and a fifth and a seventh and a fifteenth. I’d surround myself with them if I could, but I have the easier part of the job, don’t I?”

Depp’s transformation from firebrand to family man has had a significant effect on his career, with the actor increasingly signing up for the kind of films that his children will soon be able to enjoy. Lily-Rose and Jack are sure to love seeing their dad as Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, Peter Pan author JM Barrie in Finding Neverland and Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

“I like the idea behind what JM Barrie was doing; a belief in that kind of magic,” Depp says. “And Barrie sort of never let it go. He always believed. I think it’s important for us as adults to have that still. It gets lost over the years, doesn’t it?”

One youthful trait that Depp hasn’t lost is his habit of readily speaking his mind. The actor found himself in hot water in 2003 when a German magazine quoted him as saying that the United States is “a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you.” While Depp claims he was misquoted and would never insult the American people, he makes no bones about the fact that he prefers to see his kids grow up in their farmhouse in Provence, France.

“I think in Los Angeles you grow up too quickly,” explains Depp. “You’re exposed to so much. It’s such a short period of time that we get to be children and teenagers before being spun out into the great big world, and I want them to enjoy childhood.”

Partially relocating to France from LA has undoubtedly changed Depp’s outlook on life. “Living in Europe has given me a completely different perspective on the world,” he says. “In my business, it’s given me a great distance from Hollywood in terms of perspective. I’m not swimming in the soup bowl, now. I’m not being over-cooked in that big stew pot. I can see the game for what it is as opposed to trying to understand the game from within. I can see it from the outside. If I had to live in a place that was only about the industry, only about movies and worries about the box office, I’d lose my mind. I want to talk about goats and paintings.”

A goat might well be the next animal Depp adds to his farmyard of creatures great and small in Provence.

“I do keep animals,” he says with a chuckle. “Not at gunpoint or anything but, yeah, we’ve got some wild boar. They were there before us, so they’re basically keeping me. I’m being kept by wild pigs! We have some ponies and stuff, there’s a doggie around, a bunch of wild cats, that kind of thing. Also, many bugs, which is always good.”

Spending a relaxing time in Provence means Depp returns to film sets completely rejuvenated. “When I’ve been away from acting for a while and jump back in, it feels very comfortable,” he says. “It feels like home. I enjoy the process of making movies. I enjoy the collaboration. It can be fun.”

Depp with co-star Kate Winslet in Finding Neverland; below: As Captain Jack Sparrow with Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean.Depp has certainly been having fun working with Tim Burton, lending his voice to the animated feature Corpse Bride (released on September 23). Audiences will first see him in The Libertine (released September 16), playing real-life character John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, before returning to the screen in 2006 as Captain Jack Sparrow in the first of two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, and going all gonzo again in a screen adaptation of Hunter S Thompson’s The Rum Diary.

With an ever more impressive career (highlighted by recent Oscar nominations for Pirates… and Finding Neverland) and an idyllic personal life, it looks like Depp is maturing like one of the fine wines from the area surrounding his farmhouse. “I’m certainly getting better as a person,” he smiles, “better as a human being and better as a father, which is most important.”

From partying with celebrity friends at the Viper Room to hanging out with wild boars on a farm in France, it has taken Johnny Depp a long time to subdue his demons and figure out what makes him happiest in life. It’s not raising hell, it’s raising his daughter, Barbie doll in hand.