AGE: 37
HEIGHT: 5'11"
MARITAL STATUS: Lives with actress-singer Vanessa Paradis, 28, and their daughter Lily-Rose, who turns 2 this month
RESIDENCE: Paris, France (apartment) and Saint-Tropez (farmhouse)
JUMP START: 21 Jump Street
TATTOOED GENT: He keeps his hair long and lank, wears ratty clothes and has made his body what he calls a "journal of skin" by acquiring multiple tattoos -- including one that says "Wino Forever," amended after his 1993 breakup with fianc�e Winona Ryder. "I jot down life experiences that mean something to me -- jot them down permanently," Johnny Depp told The New York Times last month. The tattoos "just add to his whole gypsy mystique," says Ted Demme, director of Depp's latest film, Blow. "He looks like he's on the outside, like he's doing what he wants."
SWEET PART: Chocolat director, Lasse Hallstr�m, says the part of Roux, the Irish wanderer who woos Juliette Binoche's Vianne, was "a perfect fit" for Depp and, at long last, his first all-out romantic lead. "I think in the past he's been hiding a bit behind eccentric characters." They've included a Kabuki-faced oddball with blades for fingers (1990's Edward Scissorhands), a misfit who models himself after silent movie comic Buster Keaton (1993's Benny & Joon) and a Cuban drag queen (in last year's Before Night Falls).
BEST FEATURE: "He is so damn good-looking," says director Demme. "Johnny's cheekbones are insane!" Actress Leslie Caron, who worked with Depp on Chocolat, adds, "He's almost pretty, like a girl." On the set of Blow, female crew members gathered around the monitors for his close-up shots. "When I called 'Cut,' I would hear this collective sigh going on behind my back," says Demme.
CHER PAPA: They were just looking, of course; Depp has become a family man. Last May he took time off from the Chocolat set to fly home for his daughter's first birthday. He loathes being apart from Lily-Rose and Paradis. "The most we've ever gone is 17 days," he recently said, "and by then I was chewing my hand off." That's quite a turnaround from a man who, after becoming the breakout star of the TV series 21 Jump Street in the late '80s, gained a reputation for clubhopping and brawling. "I heard he was a hell-raiser, but I saw none of that," says Caron. "He just charms you immediately."
Armando Gallo/Retna Ltd, USA |
