JOHNNY DEPP
DRAG SUPERSTAR
By Peter Galvin
Photography by Greg Gorman
When Johnny Depp agreed to play a cross-dressing B-movie director in Ed Wood, he joined a new breed of actor: the type who can win an Academy Award (Tom Hanks in Philadelphia), restart his career (Terence Stamp in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), or add that extra edge of excitement to his acting (Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes in the upcoming To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar) by taking on parts that were once considered career suicide. Fearless in their role choices, such actors have also become fearless in answering certain questions put to them by the mainstream media--questions about sexual orientation, putting on condoms, and penis size.
About the only thing left for a truly adventurous hetero superstar to do is to speak directly to the gay press. And that's exactly what Depp has finally agreed to do in the following exclusive interview with The Advocate.
Just because schlock movie director Edward D. Wood Jr. was a transvestite doesn't mean he wasn't a homophobe. In his pseudo documentary Glen or Glenda (1953), in which he himself plays the title trannie, Wood offers up a slanted view of why gay men sometimes like to wear women's clothing. "The homosexual...at times does adopt the clothing or the makeup of a woman to lure members of his own sex," goes the voice-over commentary. It doesn't take a hardened activist to catch the use of the word the before homosexual, as if gay men are biological aberrations that need to be classified. And indeed, homosexuals are so repellent, they have to "lure" their sexual partners into their lairs by wearing a costume.
Similarly, there's a moment in Tim Burton's new movie, Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp in the title role, in which Wood is trying to get a producer to hire him to make a film about a transsexual. Wood says he has a special affinity for the subject matter because he has a thing for women's clothing. "Are you a fruit?" booms the producer. "No. I'm all man," says Wood. "I even fought in World War II" (as in "Gays aren't man enough to fight for their country"). Yet, to be fair to both Burton and even Wood, the rest of the movie goes to great lengths to show what an openhearted, broad-minded soul Wood was. Indeed, one of his close friends, Bunny Breckinridge, played in the movie by Bill Murray, was an effeminate homosexual and aspiring transsexual.
And what of the man who portrays this unenlightened drag queen? There have been reports in the past that Depp--an actor who is known for his penchant for playing societal outcasts (Edward Scissorhands) as well as the infinitely tolerant caretakers of societal outcasts (Benny & Joon and What's Eating Gilbert Grape)--is also a homophobe. One account accuses Depp of being repulsed when a man in a gay bar he was visiting with director John Waters asked if he could plant a kiss on Depp's cheek as a sign of friendship. Depp has denied any charges of homophobia and goes out of his way to emphasize how accepting he is of gays. "I've had men come on to me," says Depp, "but I'm not one of those guys who get pissed off and go, 'Oh, Jesus Christ, I'm a straight man!'"
Looking sexy and disheveled in worn jeans, a T-shirt that shows off his tattooed arms, and a scuffed-up pair of boots, Depp is sitting in an anomalous setting--a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Manhattan--smoking a Marlboro and drinking a Coke. The actor answers with a definite "I have not" when asked if he has ever had a sexual experience with a man, but is more cryptic when the subject of being in love with someone of the same sex is broached. "You can probably be in love with a man and not feel any sort of sexual attraction," he says. "However, if I were a homosexual, I'm sure I could fall in love with John Waters in a about a half a second because he is one of the funniest, most charming, intelligent people that I've ever known. He's really a prime catch."
Waters, who worked with Depp in the 1990 film Cry-Baby, is touched and flattered when told of Depp's affection and esteem, though he does say that there is "too much of an age difference" for them to ever be a couple.
The director of such outrageous film fare as Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble is also completely flabbergasted by the charges of homophobia that have been leveled against Depp. "Johnny is the least homophobic hetero boy I have ever met," he insists. Waters says a man did indeed come up to them in a bar and give them both a kiss but that Depp "wasn't one bit uptight. I mean, he was no more uptight than I am when strangers come up and kiss me."
And when in the same city, the pair always visit various watering holes together, says Waters. "We're just two guys who like to go out drinking," he says. "We used to joke because Johnny would pick me up in a limo, I would make drinks, and I'd say that it was like having a date with Elvis." And according to Waters, going to gay bars is not big deal for Depp. "It's just a normal thing for him," he says. "But I don't necessarily even like gay bars anyway. There's no mystery there. We go to all kinds of places--stripper bars, biker bars, and gay bars."
Depp says that for him Waters' sexuality is a nonissue and refuses to see him as a gay director. "I never thought of him in such labeled terms," he says. "I'd notice the fact that I was working with a Swedish director much more than if someone was gay."
Depp's acting career began with a part in 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street, and from there he went on to the television show 21 Jump Street, where he played an undercover cop in high school. The role made him into a star.
Since leaving 21 Jump Street, the 31-year-old Depp has transformed himself--on-screen and off--from a junk-TV heartthrob into a highly respected film actor. But while critics pay serious heed to each new performance, the tabloid media have a hard time taking his personal life seriously, what with his streak of romantic capriciousness that borders on the pathological. Since his early 20s, when he divorced makeup artist Lori Allison after two years of marriage, Depp has been engaged to four different women, Winona Ryder chief among them. His current girlfriend is waiflike supermodel Kate Moss.
Although there doesn't seem to be a question in anybody's mind that he's anything but a true-blue heterosexual, Depp says that like many homosexuals he has experienced the anxiety of not belonging. "We all have our fears about being different," he says, "whether you're gay and you're afraid to come out or you just feel like you don't fit in anyplace in society. I think you can walk away from Ed Wood being able to accept someone who does what he wants to do as long as he's not hurting anybody. Wood has been called the worst filmmaker of all time, but I disagree because he did what he wanted to do, his way. He stayed true to himself. How can anyone say that's bad?"
Depp believes that gays and lesbians should also try to remain true to themselves by coming out of the closet. "If someone is gay and wants to come out but doesn't because they're afraid of being thought of as a freak," says Depp, "they're doing themselves a tremendous disservice."
The actor says he would come out "right away" if he were gay. "Why sit and be miserable?" he asks. "I have friends who have known they were gay since they were 10 years old, and they haven't told their parents yet. It blows my mind that they can't tell the people who brought them into this world something so important about themselves."
J. Hoberman, a film critic for The Village Voice, praises Depp for his "admirable tendency to play roles that are not ordinary leading-man roles. In other words, he's not Alec Baldwin. I would call them perverse roles, but I don't mean that negatively." Yet he doesn't see Depp setting a precedent as an "androgynous star." Says Hoberman: "That's not what Depp's doing. He's playing oddballs."
Are sensitive oddballs like Depp the wave of the future? Perhaps not, with River Phoenix dead and Keanu Reeves doing a lame Schwarzenegger turn in Speed. "River Phoenix was a similar actor," says Hoberman. "He never played any macho roles. But I don't think that the majority of moviegoers identify with Depp," a fact that has been borne out in the less-than-boffo box-office performances of What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Benny & Joon. "I think there is a sensitive minority that does identify with him," Hoberman continues, "but the rest probably prefer a more straightforward model like Sylvester Stallone. Adolescents and teenagers are struggling with their own sexual and gender identity, and they may not want to identify with a star as ambiguous as Depp."
That ambiguity is certainly reinforced by Depps' cross-dressing in Ed Wood. "Wood didn't really prance around in the streets in drag," says Depp. "He mostly wore women's clothes because they made him feel more comfortable. He'd hang around at home in a dress, just relaxing." Although slipping into women's undies sounds as if it was as easy as wearing boxer shorts for the actor--"I have to say, when you're hanging out in a slip, it's really comfortable"--one wonders if his costars in the film sensed any anxiety from Depp over the drag aspect of the movie.
"If Johnny had any discomfort, it was certainly not apparent to me," says Martin Landau, who plays Bela Lugosi, a fading star who became profoundly attached to Wood toward the end of Lugosi's life. "By the time he got to the soundstage, Johnny was completely at peace with it."
Landau himself is no stranger to taking what some might consider out-of-the-mainstream parts. "When I played a homosexual in Hitchcock's North by Northwest," he says, "I was asked if I was concerned that people would think I was gay. 'Of course not," I said. It's like with Johnny--if you're comfortable with yourself, you're comfortable with yourself. Otherwise, you shouldn't be an actor."
Sarah Jessica Parker, who plays Wood's girlfriend, actress Dolores Fuller, a woman who ultimately sees her lover's transvestism as a disgusting perversion, perceives the same kind of thoughtful, self-possessed quality in Depp. "Johnny has a very wise spirit, and he pays no heed to things that don't matter,' she says. "He is internal in a way that is reflective but not isolating. He's a gentle, lovely person. And when I think of those things that have been written in the papers about him recently, it's as if they're talking about a totally different person."
Parker is referring to Depps' widely reported rampage at New York City's Mark Hotel in September in which the actor destroyed his room during a fight with Moss. A couple of days later, a patron at an East Village club claimed that three of Depp's biker-type friends roughed him up because he made an obscene gesture at Depp after the actor had slammed into him and failed to say excuse me.
The actor's response to questions about how his brawling ways match up with his so-sensitive-it-hurts image is guarded but not evasive: "Why should I be considered any different than Joe the garbageman or the guy selling donuts down the street? Why can't I be as human as anybody, as emotional as anybody?"
But $10,000 worth of damage to a hotel room? However much havoc Depp wreaked, he still believes it's his own business. "Let's say possibly that an actor assaulted a piece of furniture," says Depp, beginning a diatribe that he has repeated in other interviews. "How could any newspaper or magazine put that on the cover alongside the potential invasion of Haiti? We live in such an ambulance-chasing society--where there's this judgmental mentality waiting to expose the dirt on everyone. You'll never see one of those tabloids say, 'God, what a nice guy Johnny Depp is!' because people just aren't interested."
What is of interest to Depp's gay fans is when he will play a gay character. "Of course I'd play a homosexual in a movie," he says without hesitation. The subject gets a little stickier, though, when the question of whether the actor would play a gay love scene arises. "Sure," he insists, "but actual penetration would pose a slight problem."
Then how about an on-screen kiss--that simple act of gay romance that seems to get left out of even homo-friendly television shows and movies such as Melrose Place and Philadelphia? Says Depp with just the right amount of shy sex appeal: "Yeah, that'd be all right."
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