Depp: 'Me, a gipsy through vocation'
He changed from an irreducible rebel to a loving father
The actor is in the USA to present Lasse Hallstrom's movie Chocolat, with Juliette Binoche
By Silvia Bizio - La Repubblica [Italian daily], 12.04.00
Translated by Bab

NEW YORK - Johnny Depp finally plays the guitar in a movie: after playing with 15 different rock bands before he became an actor, the star of Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood is now an Irish gipsy that Juliette Binoche falls in love with in Chocolat, Lasse Hallstrom's movie, a hymn to chocolate, produced by Miramax and entirely shot in a small French village. Johnny Depp, who lives in France with actress Vanessa Paradis (The Girl on the Bridge) and their one and a half year old daughter, Lily-Rose Melody, is in New York to launch the movie in the USA: long hair, half hidden under a black wool cap, a T-shirt with the American Indian Movement logo 'Still strong', Johnny Depp smiles and seems to be light-years away from the rebel, who only a few years ago was arrested for smashing a room in a New York hotel: "Actually, I was more mature then, now I feel like a child, when I spend the day [there is an idiomatic sentence that means: saying stupid and onomatopoeic sounds and affectations that usually people say to very young baby: 'facendo nghè nghè', I don't know how to translate it in English] with my baby."
How did you create your character in Chocolat?
With the director we soon decided he should be a gipsy, a free spirit, who traveled all over the world with his guitar: gipsy culture fascinated me as I discovered it has many affinities with American Indians history.
Don't you miss steady roots?
I live where my daughter and my girl are. We are gipsy too, because we are continually travelling, my daughter has seen more hotel rooms in one year than I've seen in all my life.
Do you intend to keep living in France?
I was charmed by France and its way of life as I read Hemingway's A Movable Feast, and I went to Paris two and a half years ago and I met Vanessa so I never left. We don't live in Paris but in a village in the South of France, where people are generous and life is very peaceful. When I come back in the USA and I turn the TV on I hear such awful news that I realize the abysmal difference between America and Europe. I'm happy to think my daughter will be brought up in Europe.
Why do you often choice outsider characters?
I was always fascinated by people like that. It's an attraction going back to the time I was a child; my family continually moved and I remember my first school day was always a torture to me, because nobody accepted me in their clicks.
You could work in the greatest Hollywood productions, and you choice independent, non commercial movies instead...
If there were a script or a character I could believe in... It would be very good for my bank account and make my manager happy, but I'm afraid nobody would offer me 20 million dollars for the kind of movie I like.
How is your life in France when you aren't working?
After I wake up I make coffee, I prepare the bottle and a toast for my baby; then we go for a walk and play.

Return to interview page Return to Depp home page