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• I've also gotten weird letters, suicide letters, girls threatening to jump if I don't get in touch with them. So you think, "This is bullshit," but then you think, "What if it's not? Who wants to take that chance?" I write them back, tell them to hang in there, if things are that bad, they have to get better. But I'm not altogether stable myself, so who am I to give advice?
  • Quoted in Johanna Schneller, "Johnny Depp: Girls' Best Friend," Rolling Stone (December 1988)

• When I was a kid back in Kentucky, we went to this church where my uncle preached. It was kind of a weird Baptist, full-on kind of place. People kept running up to the pulpit and grabbing his ankles and being saved. Lots of crying. Even then, at six or seven, I questioned how pure the emotion could be if it were on such display.
  • Quoted in Kevin Sessums, "Johnny Be Good," Vanity Fair (February 1997)

• We're all a mishmash of extremes. I know that I have demons. I don't know if I want to get rid of them altogether, but I would like to experience them in a different way. Maybe go face to face with them. I've never really had the time to go to therapy. Well, here and there. But not enough to help.
  • Quoted in Kevin Sessums, "Johnny Be Good," Vanity Fair (February 1997)

• I despise those prick actors who say, "I was in character," and "I became the character," and all that stuff. It's hideous. It's just masturbation at the highest level.
  • Quoted in Chris Heath, "Johnny Depp's Savage Journey," Rolling Stone (1998-06-11)

• I see kids who are complete cynics. They're not dreaming. They're out there with high-powered weapons, smoking crack behind the 7-Eleven. They've seen it all. These kids are going to take us into 2000 and beyond. That's scary, man. I wouldn't say I'm pessimistic or optimistic. I'm more realistic, I guess. But not cynical. I look. I watch.
  • Quoted in Anthony Decurtis, "Rolling Stone 30th Anniversary Special: Johnny Depp," Rolling Stone (1998)

• I'm not a Blockbuster boy, I never wanted to be. I just don't want to look back in 30 or 40 or 50 years and have my grandkids say, "You did a lot of stupid shit, Granddad. What an idiot you were, smiling for the cameras and playing the game."
  • Quoted in Sophie Cooper, "Johnny Be Good," Caribbean World (Spring 1999)

• I had an incident with a really dumb magazine called Voici where they printed a photograph of Lily-Rose, a long-lens shot from very far away, and I just went ballistic. You can sue them — I've sued a couple of times, Vanessa's sued and we win every time — but this time I was beyond suing. I just wanted to beat whoever was responsible into the earth — I just wanted to rip him apart.

  So I tracked him down and gave him a few suggestions about how to live life and stay healthy and he took my advice. Because that's just unacceptable. They can do anything they want to me — and most tabloids have — but not my kid, not my pure, innocent little baby. She didn't ask to be in this circus.

  • Quoted in Jessamy Calkin, "Johnny Depp Esq.," Esquire [U.K. edition] (February 2000)

• "Film star," "movie star" — whatever they want to try to call you is limiting, in the sense that I think an actor has to be able to play characters. To separate these things — you know: "leading man," "action hero," "character actor," stuff like that — I guess if I want to be close to anything, it would be a character actor, which is what I think an actor should be. So any of that "movie star" stuff, I just don't buy it. It just doesn't make sense to me.
  • Quoted in "'Johnny Depp - From Hell' special," ITV (January 2002)

• I want to do kiddie movies now. I'm fed up with adult movies — most of them stink. At a certain point with movies it becomes all about mathematics: this has to lead up to this, this has to lead up to that — you're always bound by some kind of formula. But since having kids and watching lots of animated cartoons and all those great old Disney films, I think they're better, they're much better. They're more fun and they take more risks.
  • Quoted in Jessamy Calkin, "One That Got Away," The Daily Telegraph Magazine (2002-08-03)

• I always figured that once I wrapped a film, then anything beyond that is none of my business. If I can avoid seeing the final product, then all I have in my head is feeling good about the experience.
  • Quoted in Ron Dicker, "Going deep with rebel Johnny Depp," Baltimore Sun (2003-07-08)

• The ultimate for me would be to do a feature that didn't require any narrative structure.
  • Quoted in Ron Dicker, "Going deep with rebel Johnny Depp," Baltimore Sun (2003-07-08)

• The real movie stars were Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Spencer Tracy, Montgomery Clift. How could I put myself in the same category as Clark Gable? Tom Cruise is a great movie star. Do I consider myself a movie star? I consider myself a guy with a good job, an interesting job.
  • Quoted in Bernard Weintraub, "Playboy Interview: Johnny Depp," Playboy (May 2004)

• I do have an affinity for damaged people, in life, in roles. I don't know why. We're all damaged in our own way. Nobody's perfect. I think we are all somewhat screwy, every single one of us.
  • Quoted in Bernard Weintraub, "Playboy Interview: Johnny Depp," Playboy (May 2004)

• Depp: I would never be disrespectful to my country, to the people, especially the kids who are over there serving in the armed forces. My uncle was wounded in Vietnam, paralyzed from the neck down. I would never say those things the way they claim I said them.
  Interviewer: What exactly did you say?
  Depp: I essentially said the United States is a very young country compared with Europe. We're still growing. That's it. I wouldn't say anything anti-American. I'm an American, and I love my country.
  Interviewer: What's your view of President Bush?
  Depp: What can I say? He's somebody's kid. He's somebody's father. God bless him. Good luck. You know what I mean? I don't agree with his politics, and I'm not going to pretend to, but I don't agree with a lot of people's politics.
  • Quoted in Bernard Weintraub, "Playboy Interview: Johnny Depp," Playboy (May 2004)

• When I was a kid, we watched the Vietnam War on the six o'clock news, and it was desensitizing. You felt you were watching a war film; meanwhile you were really watching these guys getting blown to bits. Parents need to protect their kids from watching that stuff.
  • Quoted in Josh Young, "The Neverland Effect," Life (2004-11-19), p. 8

• I just don’t quite understand it [the press], really. I don’t understand the animal. It’s a strange, roundabout way of selling something; it leaves a foul taste... The thing that fascinates me is: who cares what an actor thinks?
  • Quoted in Steven Daly, "The Maverick King," Vanity Fair (November 2004)

• I’ve known that there have been a kind of select group of people, amazing die-hard supporters, even through some of the more, shall we say, odd films. These people, bless them, have stuck with me the whole length of the road. To say that you appreciate it is not nearly enough. It’s part of the essence, or fuel, of what keeps you going.

  These people are my boss; they’re the ones who keep me employed. A couple of times, they could have said, Let’s abandon him. And they haven’t. You don’t want to let them down.

  • Quoted in Steven Daly, "The Maverick King," Vanity Fair (November 2004)