Depp has been called one of the most gifted actors of his generation. Part of his fame comes from the eccentric roles he has acted in: Edward Scissorhands, Benny & Joon, What�s Eating Gilbert Grape, Don Juan DeMarco, Dead Man, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Depp shared in a Talk magazine interview, �It was really just whatever [times of cutting himself]�good times, bad times, it didn�t matter. There was no ceremony. It wasn�t like �Okay, this just happened, I have to hack a piece of my flesh off.� Depp in
another interview commented, �My body is a journal in a way [cutting]�it commemorates various rights of passage.�20
Farrell is on the Hollywood A-list of young actors. By the age of 25 he had starring roles alongside such actors as Bruce Willis, Al Pacino, and Tom Cruise. In an interview with GQ, Farrell discussed how he pulled his hair out (Trichotillomania) near his forehead as a young teenager.20
�Had he been a stable and equitable man, he could never
have inspired the nation. In 1940, when all the odds were
against Britain, a leader of sober judgment might well have
concluded that we were finished,� wrote Anthony Storr about Churhill�s having manic depression in Churhill�s Black Dog, Kafka�s Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind.21 Churchill was a man of many talents: author, soldier, journalist, legislator, and painter. Many attribute some of Churhill�s extraordinary abilities to his being affected by
bipolar disorder.22
The revered sixteenth President of the United States
experienced severe and incapacitating depressions that
occasionally led to thoughts of suicide, as documented in
several biographies by Carl Sandburg.21 Lincoln had the
enormous ability to cope with depression, especially late in
life. He used various means�work, humor, fatalistic
resignation, or even religious feelings�he generally did not
allow his depression to interfere with being President.23
Many clinicians have reviewed the medical and psychiatric
problems of the painter Vincent van Goth posthumously,
diagnosing him with a range of disorders, including epilepsy, schizophrenia, digitalis and absinthe poisoning, manic-depressive psychosis, acute intermittent porphyria and Meniere�s disease. The extent of the artist�s purported absinthe use and convulsive behavior remains unclear; in any event, his psychiatric symptoms long predate any possible history of seizures. It is possible that he experienced both epilepsy and manic depression.24
In Living in the Dead Zone, authors Faris and Faris argued that the �King and Queen� of rock and roll were experiencing borderline personality disorder, which was little understood in the 1960�s and led to their premature deaths.25
