HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU KID
How Johnny Depp woke up - the moment he became a dad

He's a heart-throb to thousands of women. But Johnny Depp says he only felt alive when he became a dad.

"As of May 27, 1999, at 8.25pm, suddenly everything became clear. I felt like for 36 years, I'd walked around in a fog, not really living."

"Now my daughter is the only reason to live, wake up in the morning, and draw a breath. More than the fact that my girl and I gave our daughter life, I think she gave us life."

Can this really be the moody, dark, hotel-trashing Johnny Depp speaking? He's a changed man, swooning over his first child, Lily-Rose.

So much that he and French singer Vanessa Paradis are now expecting a second child in the Autumn. He says he has found his soulmate in Vanessa - famed for her single Joe Le Taxi as a youngster - and life has never been better.

Johnny, 36, whose supernatural thriller The Ninth Gate is out on June 2, beams as he talks of family life in Paris. "I have adopted France or been adopted by it. This is before I met Vanessa. Now my daughter has been born I have the feeling it was her, she was the magic bringing me there."

He even croons lullabies to Lily-Rose in French.

" 'Je t'aime' (I love you) are my favourite French words. I tend to speak French to Lily-Rose Melody Depp, more than English."

"I don't speak French fluently, but I will beat this language. I sing her lullabies in French but her mum's a better singer so I let Vanessa do most of them. I'll sing to my kid, because she can't tell how bad it is yet!"

He is in awe of Vanessa, 27, especially since she gave birth. "The truth is we had such an amazing pregnancy for nine months, we were truly blessed, so watching and experiencing that together was magical, just incredible."

"And literally, at the risk of sounding corny, I fell in love with Vanessa every day all over again. No man - I don't care who he is - given that possibility, could carry a child for nine months and deliver the baby!"

"Even if he made it through nine months, he'd fold under pressure when labour hits. I never saw anything like that. That's above and beyond the call of duty."

So did daddy Depp faint at the birth?

"No, luckily I didn't, and I'm shocked at myself because I was there with Vanessa through all of it. It was amazing, the most beautiful thing I ever saw."

But his joy at fatherhood may not please movie fans - it makes him want to stay away from Tinseltown. "Any time I have to go somewhere for a film, I can't be there without them. I don't want to miss a second because babies grow up so fast"

"It rips you apart to call home from 3,000 miles away and hear your baby cooing in the background."

Beyond that, he's trying not to worry about his daughter's future boyfriends. "Believe me, if I started thinking about her at 15 and some greasy kid like me showed up at the house, I'd kill him. Then I'd be in prison. I'm scared to death about that - truly."

He and Vanessa are likely to bring up their brood in France.

"When I come home to LA and put on the television, I see a guy in North Hollywood mowing down children with a gun, I'm afraid. And I'm especially scared no that I'm a father of a girl, when I see disasters, murders, rapes, violence."

"No parent wants a child to go through that. That's why I want to live in the country of France, where life is simple and you don't have to worry about getting mugged or approached by some guy selling crack. America has gone mad."

"I've discovered the love of a parent is the most profound, sublime love - absolutely unconditional."

Johnny did wrench himself away from his family for a few months in England to shoot Sleepy Hollow and came back to play a gypsy in The man Who Cried.

He reveals: "I still have two gold teeth from playing a gypsy. I'm deathly afraid of going to the dentist to get them removed because the process is more frightening - they have to grind them off. And I'm not a big fan of the dentist!"

So what takes priority now - family or films?

"I'm astonished I can get work now, because the films I've done haven't been box-office smashes," he admits. "The fact that I can get a gig here and there and do the things I want to do without compromise is shocking. There must be an angel somewhere guiding things in the right direction."