The Express Saturday Magazine 9/18-24/99

The fast-living star who wouldn't conform is finally settling down. Fatherhood changes everything, Johnny Depp tells Nancy Mills

Johnny's Depths

For someone who made his name playing weird characters, Johnny Depp is talking just like a normal new dad. Which is weird. "Without question, this is the greatest thing I've done in my life," says Johnny in Paris, where he has been busy changing the nappies of his first child, Lily-Rose Melody Deep.

It's the only reason to take a breath. I can't understand what I was doing before," claims the man who played such oddballs as a cross-dressing B-film director in Ed Wood and the shears-for-hands shrubbery trimmer in Edward Scissorhands.

He continues, sounding just like a conventional suburban family man with 2.2 kids, "The most important thing is my family. Nothing else matters. There will be no time of separation. I want them to be with me (or me to be with them) wherever they are. I don't want to miss a second."

After a string of failed relationships with such high-profile beautiful women as Winona Ryder, Jennifer Grey, Sherilyn Fenn and Kate Moss, Johnny, 36 has finally found contentment. His partner, and the mother of his daughter, is the slightly less famous Vanessa Paradis, the French Chanel model, actress and singer of Joe Le Taxi fame. The couple started going out last summer when he was working in Paris. They met at a dinner party just after he'd broken up with Kate Moss and started an affair which soon left Vanessa pregnant and Johnny delighted.

"Things are much clearer than they ever were," Johnny says with unexpected enthusiasm. "The one thing that was missing in my life has now arrived. I'll keep my roots in Los Angeles, where I have my house, and I'll also have a place in France where we can have a strong foundation." At present, their strong foundation is at Saint Aygulf, near Saint Tropez, and they also have rented an apartment in the Montmartre district of Paris.

Although he's passionate about his new family, Johnny is realistic about the failings of his own character that have meant a string of abandoned girlfriends and embarrassingly out-of-date tattoos on his arms (The one that said 'Winona Forever' was altered to read 'Wino Forever.')

"Fidelity is fine in theory, but I'm not certain human beings are made to stay with one person forever. Everyone knows I'm difficult to live with," he admits. Which is why no one, to date, has managed it successfully.

Johnny was married briefly in his early twenties to Lori Anne Allison, but it's a subject he doesn't want to talk about. As for whether Paradis, 27 will continue with her career, he's cagey about that too: "I haven't asked her. I imagine she'll keep doing whatever she wants. Everyone needs to do what they feel they have to."

"I'm not sure if I'll ever have a complete peace of mind," Johnny adds, "but my girl and I gave Lily-Rose life, and she gave us life. She gave us the opportunity to breathe differently. It' a huge and beautiful situation."

Who would have guessed that the man who never conformed to anybody's norms would be gaga over a three-month-old baby? But Johnny would almost rather talk about Lily-Rose than the three movies he has opening in the next six months.

The first will be The Astronaut's Wife, a supernatural thriller with Johnny as the astronaut and Charlize Theron as the wife. They seem happily married until an accident occurs during one of the missions and for two minutes he and fellow astronaut (Nick Cassavetes) lose contact with earth. What exactly happened during those two minutes?

"It was fun to play a redneck, an all-American hero gone wrong," says Johnny. "What interested me was not the idea of some kind of being possibly inhabiting his body. It was that whatever happened in space just allowed him to reveal who he really is. He's got this image of being an all-American guy with bleached white teeth and sun-kissed hair, but he's an awful person."

"You want to like him, but slowly and surely, as he reveals himself, you get to a point where that's not possible. I definitely didn't like him, for sure."

Does he believe in aliens? "If you believe in humans, you'd have to believe in aliens of some sort," he hedges. "I don't know if they're little green men. You'd have to be pretty cocky to believe we're the only things here. Sure," he concludes, "why not aliens?"

In Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate, Johnny again dabbles with mysterious forces. He plays a rare book dealer trying to find two demonic texts. "Its classic Polanski," he says. "If you took Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown and mixed them together, it would be this movie. It's a thriller and it's supernatural and it's another character who's not a particularly nice guy. He's a greed machine."

Before that, however, Johnny takes on the role of Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow, director Tim Burton's version of Washington Irving's classic story. The film also stars Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson and Casper Van Dien.

"Playing Ichabod was a great challenge,"says Johnny. "This is a character we grew up knowing very well, and of course I incorporated all the stuff from the book. But Paramount wouldn't let me wear a long nose and big ears."

"In a way it's homage to all those Dracula and Hammer House of Horror films of the Sixties, with a style of acting that's just on the verge of acceptable. Maybe it's a little over the top. It's hard to explain," he adds, laughing. "I was trying to walk a tightrope."

Since finishing Sleepy Hollow, Johnny has been playing boyfriend and dad. "I realised that I'd been working for four or five years without a significant break," he says. "I've been doing movies almost back-to-back since Donnie Brasco. Now I'm taking it easy, spending time with my family." But next month he returns to work, shooting The Man Who Cried in Paris. "John Turturro plays an opera singer," says Johnny, "and I'll play a gypsy." Then there's talk of him someday portraying Liberace.

"I think I'm probably a nightmare for my agent because of the ups and downs of this weird career," says the Kentucky-born actor. "Essentially I've built a career on being a failure. I'm always shocked when I get a job. It's not like my films are huge forces at the box office."

"Maybe one of these days…" His voice trails off. "I'm not sure what's scarier, commercial failure or commercial success. I think commercial success" - which he hasn't tasted since being a teen TV star in 21 Jump Street - "is a much more scarier notion."

"I've been really lucky. There are people who go to see my films. They've taken the road with me for a long time now and have given me good support, even though it's been a weird road."

Despite his low-grossing movies, Johnny has become an icon both with the critics and paparazzi, who enjoy documenting his occasional outbursts of bad behaviour often prompted by their presence. Last winter in London was his latest display, which resulted in his arrest and a few hours in custody. "I haven't had much of a problem since I threatened them with a piece of wood," says Johnny, speaking softly but unrepentantly. "I was coming out of this restaurant, and I said politely, I really don't want to be a showboat. I don't want to be that guy tonight. They weren't going for it. So I grabbed the wood."