Cot Death - The Fear That Haunts Johnny Depp

Although Johnny Depp says: "I like kids and I've had plenty of practice as a babysitter," it's not necessarily the sort of practice he ought to repeat now that he's become a dad.

Hollywood hero Johnny shares the same fears as any ordinary parent after his lover, French beauty, Vanessa Paradis, gave birth to their 8lb daughter Lili-Rose last month. But unlike most other first-time fathers, he has faced those fears before and this time, he is going to have to let go a little.

Johnny, 36, reveals: "My sister Christine had a baby when I was 17 and I was terrified about it because I had just read a long article about cot death."

"The most horrible thing was that doctors had no idea what was causing babies to die, what made them stop breathing for no apparent reason."

"I was nervous around the baby and every night I would sneak into the room where she was sleeping and put my hand in her crib, holding her little finger, and sleep on the floor next to her just to make sure she'd be all right. I thought the warmth of my hand might help -that maybe if she felt my pulse it would remind her to breathe.

Johnny met singer-turned-actress Paradis, 26, last summer while filming The Ninth Gate. The couple now share a £750-a-week flat in the exclusive Montmartre district in Paris. They also have a £500,000 luxury villa on the French Riviera.

"I am totally dedicated to starting a family with Vanessa," says Johnny, linked in the past to many of the world's most beautiful women, including Winona Ryder and Kate Moss.

"And what's great about Paris is the people don't give a shit who you are. They appreciate art, they read a lot, and they make movies about people rather than killer asteroids. It's interesting being here."

The star, who owns the notorious Hollywood nightclub The Viper Room, laughs off rumours that he has fallen into his old wild ways after he reportedly trashed a New York hotel room.

"When I'm 60 and reading fairy tales to my grandchildren, they'll probably still ask me what happened in that hotel room," he laughs.

"Media obsession turns you into a candy bar -you can't live your life any more. There's this surreal quality to having people come up to you all the time as if they know you, or realizing all these eyes are staring at you. I know it comes with the territory. But if you're born with paranoid tendencies, it's not funny. I try to avoid being part of the game, though that gets interpreted as some sort of attitude."

Depp insists he is deeply insecure, which may have something to do with his childhood -moving 30 times while his parents tried to make a living.

"Nothing is permanent, and that messes you up," he explains. "Ever since I was a teenager I've been afraid of being a loser -with no talent or ambition. I didn't know what to do after high school and the only thing that saved me was my band."

"We were pretty good and opened for Iggy Pop, The Pretenders and Talking Heads. We thought we were going to make it big. But we didn't. We broke up, and I sold pens for some telemarketing company. They fired me after a few weeks when they found out I'd been calling my mother in Florida."

Depp can be seen later this year in The Astronaut's Wife, in which he loses his memory when his space capsule re-enters the earth's atmosphere.

The star of Edward Scissorhands and What's Eating Gilbert Grape is quick to defend hi less than conventional choice of roles. "I don't have a deep strategy about which films I want to make," he says. "But I refuse to do any movie that would make me want to throw up. That eliminates every dumb action movie, cop movie, or anything where people get blown up or shot every five minutes"

"I don't want to sound like some elitist who only does 'serious' stuff - but I like to think I'm making films that actually say something about the world instead of simply trying to make a profit."

"But the way I look at it is that I'm paid insane amounts of money to make different faces and tell lies pretending to be someone else."

However, he admits that it isn't all plain sailing, and some roles have proved emotionally painful.